MONTREAL -- The body found on Wednesday on the banks of the Grande Décharge river in Lac-Saint-Jean could be one of the snowmobilers who disappeared in January, Quebec provincial police said.
On Friday, another body was found in Alma, a town five hours north of Montreal near Saguenay.
Sgt. Hugues Beaulieu from the SQ said the bodies could belong to French tourists Jean-René Dumoulin, 24, and Arnaud Antoine, 25. A coroner has yet to confirm their identities, Beaulieu said.
On January 21, a group of eight French tourists and a Quebecois guide were snowmobiling when five of them sank into the Lake Saint-Jean.
On Feb. 6, Provincial police, who were accompanied by Montreal police, suspended searches for two of the five snowmobilers who still hadn’t been found after 16 days of combing through the waters. It was so cold in the area at the time that ice around the police boats would thicken during their search.
The body of the guide – 42-year-old Montrealer Benoît L’Espérance – was the first police found in the water. On January 24, they found the body of 58-year-old French tourist Gilles Claude, followed by Julien Benoit, 34, and Yan Thierry, 24, two days later, a few kilometres from where police began their search.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 28, 2020.
