A Shawnee man drowned over the Fourth of July holiday weekend while swimming in Stockton Lake in southwestern Missouri.
According to the Missouri Highway Patrol, at about 6 p.m. on Saturday, July 6, Craig Olson, 60, was diving and resurfacing near a pontoon boat in the first cove west of the Stockton Dam.
As he swam toward the boat, he went under water and didn’t resurface, according to a Missouri Highway Patrol press release.
He was not wearing a life jacket and was pronounced dead on the scene by the Cedar County’s deputy coroner, investigators say.
Olson’s drowning was the third of the year for Missouri State Highway Patrol Troop D, which covers counties in the southwest corner of Missouri.
Stockton Lake is a nearly 25,000-acre lake northwest of Springfield, Missouri, created in 1970 by the damming of the Sac River near Stockton.
It’s now an outdoor recreation destination popular for boating, fishing, scuba diving and more.
