The bo*dy of a Florida mom who vanished more than a decade ago was found in a pond near Disney World on New Year’s Eve, according to her family and a volunteer search team.
Sandra Lemire’s remains were found submerged in a pond on Interstate 4 near the Disney World exit in Kissimmee, Sunshine State Sonar posted to Facebook on Sunday – along with a photo of the vehicle she was driving, which was also recovered.
The news brought a sense of closure to her grieving son, Timothy Lemire, of Michigan.
“They found my mom’s van yesterday after all these years of not knowing what happened to her!” he posted on Facebook. “The guys from Sunshine State Sonar made all of this possible…these guys brought this long mysterious case to an end.”
But Timothy said he was still left with the grief of lingering, unanswered questions.
“It looks like she took an exit ramp a little too quick and went straight into the water,” he wrote. “What hurts the most is me thinking about if she suffered… or if she knew that she was trapped and couldn’t get out!”
“It ki*lls me to even think that she knew she was gonna pass,” Sandra’s son continued. “I just don’t know how to take it….I just wish I could [have] had the chance to say goodbye to her.”
In a statement provided to The Post, Orlando Police confirmed that “a volunteer civilian dive group reported a vehicle submerged in a b*ody of water on World Drive.”
Authorities did not officially confirm that the bo*dy was that of the long-missing woman, referring to the remains as “unidentified.”
Florida Highway Patrol is handling the traffic crash investigation, authorities said.
Sandra, 47, left her grandmother’s Orlando home in the older woman’s 2004 Ford Freestar minivan on May 8, 2012 to meet a man she’d been communicating with through an online dating service, the rescue group said.
She called her grandmother to say she arrived in Kissimmee and promised to call again before she started to travel home – but she never did, and no one ever heard from her again.
Sandra was last seen driving the minivan as she left a Denny’s restaurant in Kissimmee.
Police determined that the man Sandra had visited was not involved in her disappearance, WKMG reported at the time.
During an interview, the man claimed he met up with Sandra at the McDonald’s where he worked, and then they went their separate ways, according to the outlet.
Police told the network that they believe his account.
Sandra’s grandmother Pauline Varner told the outlet that she was concerned because her granddaughter was diabetic and did not have insulin with her.
“It’s very difficult because you just don’t know, and it’s not a good thing. I just hope she’s alright,” Varner said. “She told me she would call me when she got down there and she did, then she said she’d call me when she got ready to come back and I said, ‘OK fine,’ but that never happened.”
Sandra, a mother of three, was never known to disappear for an extended period of time without telling her grandmother.
“It’s just not like her because if she goes to the store, she says I’ll be back in an hour and she’s back in an hour,” Varner said.
