Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
BLUE EYE, Mo. (AP) — Two high school students drowned while swimming at a southwest Missouri lake during a school-sponsored outing.
The teens from St. Paul Lutheran High School in Concordia disappeared around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday while trying to swim from a pontoon at Table Rock Lake in Blue Eye to the shoreline 50 to 100 yards away, said Sgt. Jason Pace with the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
Rescue workers searched all afternoon until divers from the Patrol's Marine Division found the bodies in 100-foot-deep water between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., Pace said.
The boys were identified Wednesday as Isaac A. Mills, 17, of Munger, Michigan, and Shijian Lin, 17, of China.
Assistant Principal John Beerman said the drownings happened during the school's senior trip. Table Rock Lake is about 200 miles south of Concordia.
"It's one of those tragedies you never plan for and pray never happen," he said.
The private school was providing grief counseling and asking for prayers for family members, the student body and the school's faculty and staff, Beerman said. He said the senior students ended the trip early so they could go home and grieve for their classmates.
St. Paul Lutheran High School is the second-oldest Lutheran high school in North America and the only boarding school of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, according to its website.
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
