On Nov. 27, a Williamsburg fisherman’s body was recovered from Harsha Lake after an apparent accidental drowning.
The fisherman had offered to help a hunter take his deer from one side of Harsha Lake in East Fork State Park to the other on Nov. 25. Stephanie Leis, with the communication office of the Ohio Department of Natural Resource (ODNR), said both males then ended up in the water, and the fisherman did not make it to shore.
At that point, ODNR began a search that evening for the man, a search which continued through Monday and early Tuesday morning.
When ODNR officials resumed the search at 9 a.m. on Nov. 27, they used side-scan sonar to help locate the body.
Side-scan sonar is a sonar system that is often used to create an image by using sound echos of large areas of seafloor, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
By 2:05 p.m., ODNR said in an email, through utilizing the side-scan sonar, they were able to locate “what is believed to be a fisherman who fell into Harsha Lake on Sunday, Nov. 25.”
Daniel Snell, 52, was positively identified by the coroner’s office on Nov. 28, as the fisherman.
According to his obituary with Fares J. Radel funeral homes and crematory in California, a neighborhood in Cincinnati, Daniel, nicknamed, “Dapper,” was an “avid outdoorsman, who had a big heart and would go out of his way to help anyone.”
He had a daughter and two granddaughters.
Ryan ‘Buzz’ Bussey, a friend of Dan’s, made a design badge for “Dapper Dan.” A number of people on Facebook have used the badge as profile pictures.
“I met Dapper through the Owensville crew (Rumpke Mountain Boys family) of music fanatics back in 2001 or so,” he said.
Bussey told The Sun, “you would be hard-pressed to find a person on this planet that would have a bad thing to say about him.”
“Heaven can be incredibly greedy at times. It seems like only the best of us seem to get taken way too soon,” he said.
Deborah Hawkins, administrative investigator for the coroner’s office, said the cause of death had been signed out as accidental/drowning by the coroner, Dr. Brian Treon, county coroner.
A celebration of life is on Dec. 7 at the Miami Boat Club in Loveland, beginning at 5 p.m.