Search crews with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department continue their search in Lake Lewisville for a man believed to have drowned Sunday afternoon.
According to the victim's family, they were on the boat just southwest of Hidden Cove when a family member jumped into the water to cool down. The person was not considered a strong swimmer and was wearing a life jacket, but the boat soon started to drift away from the swimmer's location.
The swimmer's uncle, identified by family members as 38-year-old Michael Quach, jumped in without a life jacket to help, but went under the water and never surfaced.
"The boat started to drift and I'm over there throwing the ropes at him," said Quach's wife Brianna Mann. "It kept drifting and drifting, and I'm trying to start the boat to go back for them, and I just saw him go down and he never came back up."
Quach's niece said the father of two jumped into the water to help a family member who was panicking. Quach's two children were on the boat at the time.
Family members said Quach lives in Melissa and works in real estate. His wife described him as a caring man who loved the water; that’s why they were spending Father’s Day on the lake, she said.
Officials said Monday that divers have had a hard time locating the body and that they're unsure where exactly he went under because of how far the boat drifted.
Capt. Cliff Swofford, with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said they are using one boat with sonar and couple of search and rescue boats to try to find the man. He said high winds are making it difficult to use sonar and that the search area includes a lot of trees at a depth of up to 30 feet.
Monday afternoon officials added that the choppy water is so severe it may damage some of the equipment being used to search for the man.
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Swofford couldn’t give any kind of timeline as to how long the search could last but said they are trying their best to comfort family through the difficult search. Swofford said the rescue teams have to treat the search for the missing man as a recovery at this point.
As of Monday afternoon the niece said they had been in contact with many local hospitals to see if he had shown up and were trying to hold out hope they will see him alive again.
NBC 5's Josh Ault and Brian Scott contributed to this report.
