Police find 30 cars sunken in Florida lake

DORAL, Fla. — Police are investigating how and why approximately 30 cars were found sunken in a Florida lake.

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The lake near Miami International Airport was the focus of a team trying to crack missing person cases, The New York Times reported.

Divers from United Search Corps, a nonprofit, were there earlier this month and initially found the vehicles, CNN reported. The group is looking for evidence in more than 40 cold cases in the area and the lake was one of “several hundred locations” that are on their list.

Police said they believe that the cars were all in the lake because they had a connection to crimes, including an armed drug war between the U.S. government and Colombian drug cartels in the 1970s and 1980s. They said that the cars were from that era, the Times reported. Some, though were much newer.

“The first vehicle was an Acura Legend that was removed. It was stolen around 2002,” Doral Police Chief Edwin Lopez told WTVJ. “The second vehicle was a 1980s vehicle that was stolen in the late 90s.”

“These are most likely the types of vehicles we’re gonna find here dumped in this lake,” Miami-Dade police spokesperson Alvaro Zabaleta told the news station. “Vehicles that have perhaps been abandoned and they wanted to get rid of them, they got rid of them here, or those that took them for a joy ride, they were stolen, and then were dumped inside the lake.”

No human remains were found and none of the cars pulled from the lake were connected to missing persons cases that the United Search Corps were looking at, CNN reported.