Anthony Oliver was about 40 feet below the surface, navigating the dangerous and murky depths of Lake Lanier on a Sunday in 2021, when he reached out and grabbed what had been a faint outline captured on a scanning device.
It was a feeling the assistant dive team commander was used to — and sometimes tries to forget. With a quick motion, he turned the 23-year-old man’s body over so it didn’t face him, then kicked toward the surface.
“You’re looking at the back of the head. You just swim up,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
As a member of the Hall County Sheriff’s Office’s dive team, Oliver had been dispatched after the young man had gone down a boat slide on the notorious lake and went under the water. His friends tried to help, but he never came up amid the unseasonably cool May weather…