CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY, N.Y. (WKBW) — Family members reported 64-year-old Daniel Emerson man missing earlier this month and earlier this week, authorities said that they found his truck in Chautauqua Lake.
On Friday, authorities finally were able to recover his truck from the lake, but there's still no sign of Emerson.
"The dive teams were able to get the vehicle recovered from the bottom of the lake, bring it here to Long Point State Park," Lakewood Busti Police Chief Matthew Bentley said. "The vehicle has been taken out of the lake, brought onto shore, and the body of our missing person is not inside the vehicle."
WATCH: Crews continue to search for missing man after his truck was recovered from Chautauqua Lake
Dive teams from Chautauqua County, along with assistance from the Erie and Niagara County Sheriff's Offices and the state police, all worked together for hours Friday to get the pickup truck up from the bottom of the lake. Authorities believe Emerson was driving across the lake over the ice when it fell through on the morning of March 3.
Larry Walker, who lives by the lake thinks he saw the headlights that morning and talked to sheriff's investigators about it.
On Monday, divers located the truck in the lake, but murky conditions prevented them from seeing if anyone was inside. On Friday, they learned there wasn't.
"The vehicle was closed. There was a window down on it, so there is potential for anybody that was inside the vehicle to have been either brought out through the window or they attempted to crawl out while they were still underwater," Bentley said. "What we're still looking for now is the help from the public. If our person that we're looking for is not in the vehicle, there's a good chance that he could be somewhere along the lake shoreline, and we need the public to assist us with this. It's a disappointment for us, but it's more of a disappointment for the family. We're looking for closure for them."
