The body of Los Angeles Fire Department firefighter Connor J. Lees has been found nearly four months after the 29-year-old went missing during a recreational dive, the LAFD has announced.
Long Beach police recovered Lees’ remains Friday off the coast of Long Beach, the fire department said in a statement Saturday.
“The LAFD stands united in grief alongside Firefighter Lees’ family, friends, and colleagues,” the department said. “We extend our deepest condolences to all who knew and loved him.”
Lees, a six-year veteran of the department assigned to Fire Station 94 in Baldwin Hills, went missing Dec. 4 while diving near Pier J in Long Beach.
The off-duty firefighter was part of a group of four men in their 20s who had set out that evening to free dive, which involves swimming underwater without breathing apparatus or scuba tanks.
Lees was one of three divers who plunged into the water while the fourth man drove the boat, the Long Beach fire department said at the time. When only two of the men resurfaced, the group called 911.
Rescue divers from the Long Beach and L.A. city and county fire departments and personnel from the U.S. Coast Guard, Long Beach Police and Los Angeles Port Police embarked on a search immediately.
Two days later, emergency personnel announced that the search and rescue effort had become a recovery mission, based on water conditions and the low likelihood that the diver had survived.
“As we look to the sea … we are assured that he is where he always wanted to be,” Lees’ friends and family wrote on a GoFundMe page set up after his disappearance. “He loved the water and everything it brings to our lives. It shaped him into the boy, the son, the brother, the friend, the athlete, the surfer, the explorer, the firefighter, the companion, and the man he became. In his time, Connor will tell us how he and the sea forever remain connected.”
