A search of the area near a residence on Kensington Drive off Reese Road in east Coweta over the weekend revealed the body of 36 year-old David Brightwell in a lake behind the home.

Coweta Assistant Fire Chief Todd Moore said his department was called by Coweta sheriff’s deputies on Feb. 13 at approximately 7:30 p.m. to provide lighting at the residence at 225 Kensington Drive near Sharpsburg. Moore said deputies had been at the scene since approximately 5 p.m. after a missing person’s report had been filed.

The area around Sharpsburg, like all of metro Atlanta, was in the grip of cold temperatures, with plenty of snow and ice still on the ground from the snowfall Friday.

Moore said firefighters assisted in the search of the area around by providing lighting equipment, night vision binoculars and thermal imaging cameras to do a grid search of the wooded area around the home. No evidence of Brightwell had been found by 10:30 p.m., Moore said.

Moore said another call was placed by family members Sunday morning reporting that they had found an article of clothing belonging to the missing person at the water line of a pond behind the home.

“At that time we dispatched members of our special response team to assist in another grid search of the property plus a search of the lake itself,” Moore said. “Upon arriving the sheriff’s department had tracked recent phone activity from the missing person’s cell phone and found that the last time the phone was used was around 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon and that it was used to take a picture of the lake in question. So that along with the article of clothing being found led us to believe that the missing person was in the lake.”

The Coweta County Sheriff’s chopper was called to the site along with the Peachtree City Dive Team to search the pond. Omega K-9 Search and Rescue assisted by providing a cadaver dog and Georgia Dept. of Natural Resources sent a boat crew, Moore said.

“It was a team effort that lasted about eight hours and a lot of resources were used to eventually locate the missing person,” Moore said. “I had spoke with family members earlier in the day and told them that if their love one was in the lake that we would not leave until we found him. We found the body of Mr. David Glen Brightwell at 4:17 p.m.”

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