Body recovered in Cheat Lake may be missing Smithfield man
First responders recovered a car Sunday afternoon that had been submerged in frozen-over Cheat Lake — but Monongalia County Sheriff Todd Forbes said he couldn’t confirm if the deceased man inside was Kevin Lataille, who had gone missing while driving home at the height of last weekend’s snowstorm.
“I can tell you we have a victim and a vehicle,” the sheriff said as he stood near the water’s edge with the Interstate 68 Bridge towering overhead.
Dive teams from Murrysville and Morgantown Police broke through an eight-inch layer of ice to reach the car, a dark-colored SUV. A crane then hoisted the SUV some 80 feet up to the bridge.
“It took a lot of work,” said Morgantown Police Capt. Douglas Sharpe, who oversees the city divers.
Teams from both departments drilled and chipped away at the ice, solid enough to support their weight, with augers, power saws and handsaws.
Darrick Gerano, the director of Murrysville Medical and the lone diver who went in, said the car was about 12 feet down.
As many as 100 responders were all also there for the effort, including other rescue teams from Donora, West Virginia State Police and the Division of Natural Resources from the Mountain State.
“All these people right here,” Gerano said, gesturing around.
While the work was hard, both he and Forbes said the wrenching ordeal of waiting was now over for anxious loved ones — somewhere.
“At least a family will be able to get closure,” Gerano said.
Meanwhile, there’s still the family of Lataille, who had finished his shift last Sunday at the Patteson Drive Eat’n Park at 12:15 p.m. and called his wife, Lisa, to let her know he was heading home.
His wife, Lisa Ross-Lataille, previously told The Dominion Post that he got behind the wheel of his bronze Hyundai Tucson and set off, planning to motor W.Va. 705 and Pa. 43 to get there.
It was snowing heavily with iced-up roads and low visibility, so he made sure to check in, she said.
He called again around 12:50 p.m. to say that while the roads were bad, he was still making progress. He had just spotted the sign for Lakeview Golf Resort and Spa, Ross-Laitelle said.
“I told him to be careful and to do what he needed to do,” she said.
That was the last she heard of him.
“It was like he disappeared,” she said. “Somebody had to have seen something.”
With the sub-freezing temperatures that marked last week, she feared the worst, she told the newspaper — but she was also heartened by the outpouring of his family and friends, who, by car and on foot in extreme weather, covered a swath from 705 to the Ices Ferry Bridge in the effort to find him.
Using drone photography, the sheriff’s department determined the location of the car extracted from the ice Sunday.
“We originally thought it was partially submerged, but that was just debris,” Forbes said.
A family member, though, said in a Facebook post later that day that the car recovered was Lataille’s and that the person inside was Kevin.
Given the scope of the investigation and the sensitivity of the loss, the sheriff couldn’t confirm that, he said.
“It wouldn’t be responsible for me to say anything right now.”