KEY POINTS

  • The first body was found by a fisherman on Utah Lake, and the second was found a few hours later by a police pilot flying overhead
  • Police said they suspected the bodies to be missing teens Priscilla Bienkowski and Sophia Hernandez who reportedly disappeared while tubing
  • By Thursday, police crews had searched the lake for around 1,000 hours 

Police in Utah said Friday they suspected two bodies found in a lake were two teen girls reportedly missing more than a week ago.

The Utah County Sheriff’s Office said the first body was found around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday by a fisherman on Utah Lake outside Salt Lake City. The second body was found around 4:30 p.m. by a sheriff’s office pilot conducting another search of the area.

Sheriff Mike Smith told reporters the bodies were suspected to be missing teens Priscilla Bienkowski, 18, and Sophia Hernandez, 17. The two reportedly went tubing around 3:30 p.m. on May 6. Around that time, a severe storm rolled through the area, engulfing a large portion of the lake.

A media briefing is planned for 7:30 p.m. Friday with Smith to discuss the details of the search.

Police said a fisherman found the girls’ belongings around 8 p.m. when he heard a cellphone ringing on the shore. The call was from one of the girls’ mothers, who was searching for the pair. The fisherman told the mother he hadn’t seen either and she subsequently called police.

Crews began search efforts that night and located the girls’ car, tubes, and other belongings along the shoreline. However, the lake’s poor visibility forced police to rely on sonar for the search.

By Thursday, police had spent 1,000 hours searching searched most of the lake’s 96,000-acre surface.

Police Scene
Representational image of a crime scene. Suzanne Cordiero/AFP/Getty Images
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