Update: Authorities have identified Friday's drowning victim at Sunrise Beach as Rick L. Steffey, 48, of Homer, Illinois.
Link: Patrol incident report
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Earlier coverage:
The Missouri Highway State Patrol was on the scene of a reported sinking boat Friday morning in Sunrise Beach where a body was found later in the evening.
Highway Patrol Cpl. Scott White said the department's Troop F received a call around 11:18 a.m. that a boat was sinking at the 18.5 mile-marker of the Lake of the Ozarks and that a person was in the water, struggling and then went under water.
Dan Fisher, a local area contractor who witnessed the sinking boat and made the call, said he came down Blue Water Bay Drive in the Shawnee Bend area and saw the nose of the boat sticking out of the water about six to eight feet and a person struggling to swim. Fisher said he hollered to the guy to hang on as he rushed to get a nearby boat.
"By the time I got there he was gone and the boat had finally sunk. All I could see was water bubbling up from where the boat was and he was gone. There was another contractor working on a nearby house and there was nothing he could do either," Fisher described.
Troopers spent several hours searching for where the boat might be based on the witness's reports by utilizing a side-scan sonar search and then also did a surface search for the body, according to White.
Once they pinpointed where they thought the boat was, the dive team was called in to try and recover the boat and search for a body in the locations that were highlighted in the sonar search.
The second of two boats arrived around 5:40 p.m. to help pinpoint specific locations to search. At approximately 6:14 p.m. the divers recovered the body.
According to the Highway Patrol, the next step is to identify the body.
No word was given regarding the recovery of the boat, but White had said once it got dark there would not be much more they could do.