VAN BUREN TOWNSHIP, Mich. – The body of 23-year-old Patrick Todd has been recovered at Belleville Lake in Wayne County.
Search and rescue teams spent Memorial Day searching for him after an undertow swept him underwater. Another person was taken under as well but resurfaced.
Although the finding was not the outcome anyone had hoped for, Todd was pulled from the lake at 7:18 p.m. Monday (May 27) after a nearly three-hour search.
Since then, Local 4 has learned much about who he was and how deeply he’ll be missed.
“My condolences as at any minute your life can be taken,” said Bryan Butzin.
Todd’s family shared a picture of him from a few years ago with a puppy on his lap.
Todd loved animals, and although he was 23, they say he had challenges; he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and taken in by extended family.
On Memorial Day, he was out with his family on the lake when he was swept away.
“I know it’s not easy,” Butzin said. “Especially in these conditions. Driving a boat let alone trying to fight the currents.”
Police say Todd and a couple of others were attempting to walk a sandbar that connects Firecracker Island and a Hillside Cemetery when the current swept him and a relative away.
“The current does go from west to east, and the wind today is definitely coming out of the west,” Butzin said. “So it’s even speeding up that current and that undertone underneath the water getting that much more that it’s going to pull you under.”
Teams used Sonar to search for him and eventually located his body right near where he went under.
“I don’t have nothing to say as it really touches me at the heart,” Butzin said. "
Mindy is the woman who raised Todd. She said she took care of him but it was he who was taking care of her in the hardest times of her life.
