Missing US Sailor’s Body Has Been Recovered

(RightWing.org) – The body of a missing US Navy sailor has been found over a month after he vanished from the shore of Lake Michigan. The dead man had gone out with friends to celebrate St Patrick’s Day but wandered off on his own. When he didn’t return to base the next day, a search was launched; unfortunately, it ended with a tragic find.

A body found in Illinois along the coast of Lake Michigan has been identified as Seamus Gray, a Navy sailor who was last seen leaving a bar after a night out for St. Patrick’s Day.https://t.co/jjDCKrBRSc

— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) April 20, 2023

Seamus Gray, a 21-year-old sailor based at Naval Station Great Lakes, spent the evening of March 17 touring the bars of Waukegan, Illinois, with friends. Around 1:30 a.m. the next morning, he was involved in a scuffle outside a nightclub, where he was refused entrance and went off on his own.

Staff at the Ibiza Nightclub said Gray had been there earlier in the evening and then came back around closing time; they asked him to leave because he looked drunk. He was last seen by a CCTV camera near the harbor at 1:40 a.m., then failed to return to the Naval Station by the 2 a.m. curfew. Three days later, Waukegan police and firefighters began a search of the shoreline, helped by a hundred volunteers from the Naval Station, but no trace of Gray was found, and the search was called off on March 24.

Then, just after 7 p.m. on April 19, utility workers near Waukegan Harbor spotted a body in the water. They flagged down a police car and reported it; cops and firefighters were then able to retrieve the body. Based on the clothes it was wearing, police decided it was probably the remains of Gray.

On April 20, the Lake County Coroner’s Office confirmed it was Gray and that he had drowned. The autopsy report found no evidence that any injury had contributed to his death. Unfortunately, it seems Seamus Gray’s night out ended with a tragic fall into the bitterly cold water of the harbor — and no one was there to save him.