Man rescued from secluded Lake Wylie cove after all-night search

LAKE WYLIE, S.C. — A search and rescue effort on Lake Wylie stretched from around 8 p.m. Thursday until 4 a.m. Friday. Then Department of Natural Resources officers joined York County Sheriff's Office deputies and began searching again in the late morning.

The sheriff's office put out an alert for 50-year-old Larry Hollis of Clover, who was last seen on a blue Sea-Doo around 6 Thursday night. He had been visiting family for the holiday on Tiger Paw Road, and left there on the Sea-Doo on Big Allison Creek.

Channel 9 was there when a rescue boat pulled the damaged jet ski out of the narrow cove where Hollis ended up and spent the night. DNR officers said he had ridden to the far side of Big Allison creek, west of the bridge on Highway 274. The jet ski apparently broke down, and he ended up stuck on a sand bar. Jason Plemmons with DNR said it's a very secluded area of the lake.

"There's no boat traffic that goes up in the area because it's really shallow and there's no houses up there," Plemmons said.

Larger rescue boats couldn't get in there either, so crews weren't able to search that area of the lake Thursday night.

Members of Hollis's family were also out searching, walking along the wooded shore of the lake, when they were the first to spot him. Once he was seen on the sand bar, officers used small boats to rescue him and tow the jet ski back to the Allison Creek boat landing.

Plemmons got to talk to him when he reached the shore.

"He was happy that he was rescued, and he was doing real well," he said, noting medics checked him out when he got to shore. “He rode off in a car with his wife.”

DNR said it's not clear what the mechanical problem was with the jet ski. Plemmons said it was probably safer that Hollis stayed on the sand bar, because even though the water is shallow, there is deep mud. They said he could have gotten stuck in the mud and drowned.

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