A YouTube dive team has branded Kiely Rodni’s death ‘suspicious’ as her devastated father is demanding to know why the group found his daughter’s body despite cops having already searched the lake.
Police called in Adventures With Purpose (AWP) to help them to find the missing 16-year-old, who then discovered her car in Prosser Lake, California, just 35 minutes after starting their search.
In a newly-released video, the team show how they found her car upside-down in just 14ft of water, and 55ft from the shore, using sonar technology.
The team from AWP took two sonar boats onto the water at 10.40am on August 21, and identified Kiely’s 2013 silver Honda under the water at 11.15am.
They confirmed that her body was found in the back of the car, with the passenger window broken and the drivers rear window halfway down.
She was also confirmed to not be wearing a seatbelt, and it is unclear the exact circumstances that led to the windows being open and broken.
After surfacing from his dive Nick Rinn, part of AWP, said: ‘She’s in the back of the vehicle, she’s not in the drivers seat.
‘It looks suspicious to me, vehicles upside down one window is halfway down one window is all the way down.’
The team then call Rodni’s relatives, before contacting authorities, with her dad David and grandfather rushing to the scene to see what the divers found.
When told how close to shore the car was, and that it was int eh same area that cops had previously scoured, David said: ‘How the f*** could they have missed it? That f***ing impossible’.
Diver Nick Rinn, pictured, said that he thought the discovery was ‘suspicious’ after positivley identifying the car as Kiely’s. Teams from Placer County, Nevada County and Alameda County were all involved in the search for the teen who vanished after a party at Prosser Family Campground on August 6
Her dad then asked a few questions about how she was found, before getting emotional and saying ‘I can’t see this cause it’s going to be my last memory and I can’t f***ing do it’ before leaving the scene.
Dive teams from Placer County, Nevada County and Alameda County were all involved in the search for the teen who vanished after a party at Prosser Family Campground on August 6.
Her cell phone last pinged around 12:30am near the campground’s reservoir after she texted her mother to say she was heading back to Truckee, just 12 miles from the party.
Authorities, including the FBI, say that they scanned through nearly 2,000 tips in the two-week hunt for Rodni, and spent almost 20,000 hours looking for her.
The teenager sent her mother Lindsey, 42, a text message saying she planned to leave in 45 minutes at approximately 11.30pm.
She had been due to meet friends at a local Starbucks at 9am ahead of a camping trip but failed to show up – prompting her mother to sound the alarm.
Key differences between YouTube divers and official police search
Adventures with Purpose have helped close 23 cold cases by using state-of-the art Garmin sonar technology, and use an inflatable boats which all have down imaging, side scan and a live scan to search deep within the water.
Authorities searching the same stretch of water days before claim that they were unable to see anything because of the nature of the lake bed, saying it was like ‘going through mud’.
Police divers started searching for the missing teen three days after she vanished from a graduation party – and spent tow days coming the body of water her car was found in.
They used a ‘phased’ search because they did not want to disturb the muddy lake bed and divers were a ‘last resort’.
AWP found Rodni’s SUV within 35 minutes on the water.
Police are waiting a full autopsy with toxicology reports and say the investigation is ongoing, but they confirmed that the remains were Kiely’s.
Placer County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Sam Brown said at a press conference that the cops linked up with AWP after ‘realizing an interest’ and ‘reading online’.
Doug Bishop, who leads the team, explained in the video spotting the ‘weird’ reading on a sonar scanner.
He said: ‘That is giving me a really weird reading, it looks just like a car it looks just like an SUV.
‘It’s giving me some misreading’s just the way a newer car would.’
The Oregon-based group says it has solved more than 20 missing persons cases using sonar and search-and-rescue techniques for its dive team.
Bishop said they put two sonar boats in the water at 10:40am and by 11:15am Rinn detected an object with sonar technology. Bishop said he was able to confirm it was a vehicle. Rinn put on his gear and conducted the dive to examine the car.
‘Once we confirmed it was indeed Kiely’s vehicle we immediately notified family, law enforcement and (the teen’s) dad and grandpa were on scene within minutes,’ Bishop said.
Rodni was last seen alive August 6 near the Prosser Family Campground in Truckee, attending a party with hundreds of young people, authorities have said.
The campground is at the reservoir in the Sierra Nevada, about 165 miles northeast of San Francisco.
She had been due to meet friends at a local Starbucks at 9am ahead of a camping trip but failed to show up – prompting her mother to sound the alarm.
Placer County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Sam Brown said at a press conference that the cops linked up with AWP after ‘realizing an interest’ and ‘reading online’.
He said: ‘We did link up Sgt Mike Powers with them, there was lots of communication as they were traveling to the area.
