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A series of severe boating incidents and fatal accidents kept emergency crews busy on Georgia lakes and rivers over the holiday weekend.
Georgia lake fatalities
What we know:
Georgia Department of Natural Resources game wardens recovered the bodies of two men following separate holiday weekend tragedies.
On Friday, 51-year-old Leonard Latresse Polk of Albany died at a private pond in Worth County after a tractor flipped off a trailer and rolled over him into the water.
Witnesses tried to save him but were unsuccessful, and game wardens later recovered his body.
Early Saturday morning, witnesses at Lake Sinclair heard a man screaming for help from the water near the steel bridge area at 3:30 a.m.
Crews launched a search using side-scan SONAR and located the body of 34-year-old David Hoyt Glass in 9 feet of water just before 1 p.m.
Lake Lanier boat crashes
The holiday chaos on Lake Lanier began on Friday, July 3, when game wardens spotted firefighters treating a woman at Mountain View Park who had hurt her leg when a 20-foot boat hit a massive wake.
Later that night, around 10 p.m., game wardens rushed to the Athens Boat Club area after a fireworks show and pulled two people from a large debris field in high-traffic waters.
Passengers and the operator of the pontoon boat near the Athens Boat Club told investigators that a massive wake slammed directly over the bow of their vessel.
The force of the water broke the starboard bow seat compartment and paneling, throwing two people directly into the lake.
On Saturday, July 4, at 8:30 p.m., a cabin cruiser lost power and smashed into three separate boats trying to dock at Margaritaville.
PREVIOUS STORY: 1 dead in Lake Sinclair drowning; others injured in Lake Lanier boat crashes
Regional waterway emergencies
Statewide emergency teams faced multiple localized crises on regional rivers and smaller lakes.
On Saturday afternoon, a 16-year-old operating a personal watercraft on Lake Nottely in Union County was hurt when another teen on a watercraft T-boned them.
On the Ocmulgee River in Pulaski County, a man and his grandfather narrowly escaped a sinking boat after their motor struck an underwater rock, ripping the engine completely off the hull.
Good Samaritans in a passing vessel picked them up from the riverbank and brought them to safety.
What we don't know:
Officials have not yet confirmed what caused the tractor to flip off the trailer during the Worth County incident. Investigators also have not released information regarding why Glass was in the water or how he ended up in distress before drowning in Lake Sinclair.
The Source: The information in this story was gathered from Georgia Department of Natural Resources.