Body of Missing Snellville Boater Recovered

SNELLVILLE, GA -- Georgia Department of Natural Resources rangers on Monday recovered the body of a Snellville man who had been missing on Lake Lanier for more than a week.

Shortly before 10 a.m., a boater called 911 to report a body in the water just south of Cocktail Cove, where 57-year-old Jerry Kornmeier had gone missing last Saturday.

Rangers responded and recovered the body.

Kornmeier went missing around 5 p.m. last Saturday, according to the DNR.

Park rangers were called to look for him in the Cocktail Cove area.

They found Kornmeier's empty boat adrift in open water just outside the cove, but no sign of him.

Then began a frustrating week of unfruitful searches for Kornmeier.

"During the first four days of the search, Rangers had covered the area as thoroughly as possible with sonar equipment," DNR spokesman Mark McKinnon said in a news release. "But with very deep water, standing timber on the bottom, and an unverified location of exactly where the victim may have entered the water, they decided to scale back the search to shoreline sweeps several times a day."

The DNR's Critical Incident Reconstruction Team plans to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident, the news release said.

Kornmeier's body has been sent to the crime lab for an autopsy to determine his exact cause of death.