Underwater video shows discovery of missing SUV in Snake River

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IDAHO FALLS — Video shot in the Snake River shows an SUV has been sitting just feet below the surface of the water for about a year.

Ben Nye was helping a friend recover crawfish traps in the river last week near the Veterans War Memorial on Memorial Drive. Nye is an experienced diver and went under the water never expecting to find a vehicle.

“When he found the Crayster (my company’s crawfish traps), he stood up on something in the Snake River,” Chad Wheeler, one of the owners of Crayster, tells EastIdahoNews.com. “Surprised I asked, ‘What is that you are standing on?’ He said, ‘You will never believe what I found.’ I replied,

‘My crawfish traps? Multiple crawfish traps?’ He said, ‘Nope. There is a GMC Envoy down here…. A flippin car!'”

Wheeler called the police and reported the startling discovery. He says Nye was able to get a license plate off the SUV and tie a “Crayster” crawfish buoy to the Envoy so the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Aquatic Rescue Team could easily find it.

Divers went into the river Tuesday, found the vehicle and removed it from the water.

Idaho Falls Police Lt. Robert Lasher said an intoxicated man drove the SUV into the river about a year ago. He was able to get out of the water and walk home but the next morning, the man and his wife realized their vehicle was missing. Its whereabouts have remained a mystery until Nye found it.

“We were glad that no deceased bodies were in the vehicle. It was just a crazy day recovering crawfish traps…and we would have never thought in a million years we would come across an abandoned vehicle in the Snake River,” Wheeler explains.

Nye recorded his experience in the water with a GoPro camera. Watch in the video player above.