Car found at the bottom of a Mississippi canal was stolen 17 years ago, deputies say
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was performing some sonar training in the Sunflower River Diversion Canal in Mississippi when officials noticed something unusual: a vehicle sitting on the bottom of the canal.
When authorities finally got the car out of the water, it “was obvious that it had been there for a long period of time,” Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace told McClatchy News.
And indeed, it had been — for 17 years.
When the engineers called Pace on March 7 to share what they found, deputies immediately deployed patrol boats to the area, the sheriff said.
The patrol boat operator located the vehicle pretty quickly — sitting in 28 feet of water about 200 feet from the bank.
On March 9, after securing a cable long enough to reach the car, a dive team from the Vicksburg Fire Department dove down and connected two chains to the frame of the vehicle, Pace explained.
“I have high praise for the fire department’s dive team,” Pace said as the divers had to “strictly search by feel” because the river was so muddy they had zero visibility.
The sheriff’s office identified that the tag on the car had expired in 2005. After digging through records, deputies discovered that the vehicle was stolen at night out of a parking lot in North Jackson that same year.
Pace said that at the time, the car was a brand new model: a 2004 Ford Taurus.
Despite the rust and damage caused by the water for all these years, the car had no apparent damage. It appears that whoever stole the car rolled it down a boat launch ramp and let it sink, the sheriff said.
As of March 11, deputies had not yet been able to reach the owner, but they do know who it is, Pace said.
“My investigators at this time are attempting to locate the owner just to make them aware that the vehicle has been recovered,” Pace said. “Although it’s of no value.”
Investigators said there was no indication that any person or personal property was in the vehicle when it sank.
This story was originally published March 14, 2022 at 10:26 AM with the headline "Car found at the bottom of a Mississippi canal was stolen 17 years ago, deputies say."
