GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — Family members and close friends are mourning the loss of two men who drowned in separate incidents in Lake Lanier.
A college student who was home for the Labor Day weekend drowned after falling off a personal watercraft, his mother said.
Stephanie O'Shields told Channel 2's Chris Jose that her son, Bailey O'Shields, 21, was home from school in Florida when this terrible incident happened.
Firefighters responded just before 7 p.m. on Friday to reports of a jet ski circling the lake without an operator at East Bank in Buford.
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The jet ski was located about 100 feet from the boat ramp.
Stephanie told Jose her son suffered from a brain condition called arteriovenous malformation, or AVM. He had a seizure and fell off his jet ski.
In another incident, a woman told Jose she tried to save her boyfriend before he drowned in Lake Lanier.
35-year-old Quincy Finch drowned Monday night. Finch's body was recovered after dive teams searched the murky water for more than three hours.
His girlfriend, Alexis Martin, says he was in waist deep water, about 20 yards away from her when he screamed for help.
"All I can remember is going down beneath the water trying to help him and he didn't come back up at all," Martin said.
Finch's mother, Agnes Freeland, said she arrived 30 minutes after divers found her son's body.
"He was kind and he was compassionate. and if you met him, you would've loved him," she said.
The devastated mother she's in the process of planning his funeral.
Two children, both under the age of 12, also drowned during the Labor Day weekend in Troup County.
Cox Media Group
