MELBOURNE, Fla. – The company credited with helping to solve a number of missing persons cases here in South Florida has done it again.
Sunshine State Sonar has uncovered a van in a Melbourne lake, solving the case of a missing mother who disappeared 10 years ago.
That mother, Katia Belaya, left a store in 2014 but never returned home.
Other teams had attempted the search over the years, but with 500 bodies of water within a few square miles of Belaya’s home, they always hit dead ends.
Sunshine State Sonar was alerted about the case this summer, and the 24-foot dive eventually brought Belaya’s 2003 Honda Odyssey to the surface.
“We searched 33 bodies of water before we found her. I just thought that this was one of those cases that was gonna go, you know, four or 500 bodies of water before we found her,” Sunshine State Sonar founder Mike Sullivan said. “I think we were all pretty surprised actually how quickly we ended up finding her.”
On Thursday, deputies confirmed that the remains were those of the missing mother, but her cause of death remains unknown.