Bodies of 2 Men Swept Into Lake Michigan Recovered

Eric Chaney
Published: July 19,2016
A dive team from the Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, Sheriff's Office has recovered the bodies of two men who were swept from the Sheboygan Pier into Lake Michigan by high surf over the weekend.
Authorities say 21-year-old Kurt Ahonen, of Suamico, Wisconsin, and 22-year-old Adam LaLuzerne were walking along the pier Sunday afternoon when waves washed the two men and a third friend, 22-year-old Dylan Abeyta, into the water.

The bodies of two men have been recovered after high waves swept the men from the Sheboygan Pier, shown here in a 2011 file photo, over the weekend.
(Flickr/Jeffery Wright )

Abeyta told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that he and his friends decided to walk out on the breakwall after seeing some fisherman at the end of the pier.
"We thought if they could make it, we could make it," he said.
Winds were gusting up to 30 mph in the area at the time, said weather.com meteorologist Chris Dolce, which created the churning surf that pulled the men in.
"It was very difficult for us to maintain our heads above water and for us to control where we were in the water,” Abeyta told WISN.com. “Eventually, I just had to go with the current wherever it was taking me, and I was separated from the other two.”
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Another friend, Jeremy Wheat of Sturgeon Bay, had not walked onto the pier and was able to get word to the U.S. Coast Guard, Abeyta told the Journal Sentinel.
"I was hoping for a miracle,” Abeyta said. “When I was by myself, I couldn't see where I was.”
Abeyta wrote in a Facebook post that a Coast Guard boat pulled him from the water, “just as I was losing hope.”
"They tried to throw me a life vest,” he told WISN.com, “but I was just too weak to try to swim and go get it, so they got closer, and he used a pole to pull me up onto the boat.”
But rescue crews were unable to locate Ahonen or LaLuzerne, and treacherous water conditions forced rescuers to suspend their search on Sunday, WBAY.com reports. Their bodies were recovered on Monday.
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Both men had attended St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, south of Green Bay.
“There’s a sense of shock,” St. Norbert College President Thomas Kunkel told WBAY.com. “I mean, it’s tremendous sadness, and it feels surreal.”
The tragedy marks the second deadly weekend in a row on Lake Michigan. A man drowned near Grand Haven, Michigan, on July 9 after his two-person kayak capsized. Two other men drowned that same day while attempting to rescue children caught in choppy Lake Michigan waters off the Miller Beach community of Gary, Indiana.
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