The 79-year-old man who had been missing since yesterday afternoon and whose car was found «totally submerged», was discovered this Monday, at 9:30 am, already lifeless, «about a hundred meters from the place where the car was» , GNR source told the Sul Informação.
The body was discovered by a GNR tracking dog, shortly after the search for the elderly man had resumed, which had been suspended yesterday at nightfall due to «the lack of visibility». The accident area is on the road that connects the Kadoc nightclub to the Boliqueime train station.
According to the spokesman for the Territorial Command of Faro from GNR captain Carlos Bengala, the man was resident in Covilhã and would have a second home in Boliqueime. He was in the region to "celebrate his birthday" and left home to shop, when his car, a Smart, was caught by the flood resulting from the overflow of a stream, in the area of Cerca da Areia, and dragged into a ditch.
The man is said to have tried to get out of the car, which was submerged, breaking the glass, but ended up being dragged by the water and dying.
The car was detected by a popular person, who alerted the authorities. “At the beginning, we didn't know if it was a car that had been dragged by the water, without an occupant, as happened to so many others, or if it had an occupant. Through the registration, we reached the owner and got in touch with the man's wife, who told us that he had left home and had not yet returned», revealed Carlos Bengala.
From that moment on, the search began, which lasted until nightfall. At that time, the GNR suspended operations and requested support from Lisbon, to send specialized units, namely "divers and brigades (man and dog)". The searches resumed at 8:55 am and the man was found shortly after, "by one of the dogs".
This was the only human victim of yesterday's storm in the Algarve, and there is no record of people who were injured. But there was "major material damage," said the GNR spokesman.
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