Divers Find Body in Search for Robert Heikka, Missing for 3 Years

The search for a missing schoolteacher is feared to have ended in tragedy three years after his disappearance, as a body was recovered from his car found submerged at the bottom of a canal.

The remains were discovered in a watery grave by a volunteer search team that had been looking for Robert Heikka along Pioneer Trail near Daytona Beach on Saturday. The area had been searched before, but water levels had dropped and partially revealed the vehicle, which officials confirmed belonged to Heikka.

Police and local residents had been searching for the 70-year-old ever since he went missing from his home in Port Orange, Florida, back on October 25, 2020. He was reported missing by worried coworkers when he failed to show up for work at Creekside Middle School.

The Volusia County Sheriff's Office revealed that Heikka's car was found at the weekend with divers making the grim discovery that there was a body inside. The teacher's family was notified as officials worked to confirm the occupant's identity, the Sheriff's Office said.

Port Orange Police Department posted further updates about the case on their Facebook page over the weekend, and suggested that Heikka had indeed finally been found, saying the sad discovery had brought "some much needed closure to Mr. Heikka's family" and offering their "prayers and thoughts" to his loved ones.

The police force also shared Heikka's missing person flyer with the word "Solved!!!" written across it, alongside a post by the Sunshine State Sonar Search Team which said Heikka had been killed in a crash. The sonar team wrote: "Tragically, Robert lost control of his vehicle on a sharp corner that fateful night. The vehicle went crashing through 75 feet of trees and brush before ending up in this small canal."

Newsweek has reached out to Port Orange Police by email for further information and comment.

In response to the police post, many Facebook users paid tribute to Heikka. One wrote: "Rest in peace, my friend. I spent hours looking for you, searching for a disturbance in the woods along 44 where your car could have gone. So many others did as well. You were hidden and not found but not because no one tried. Prayers for your children and friends."

While one another added: "So sad! He was my computer class teacher. Very nice guy and always wanted to help. Prayers for the family."

The Sunshine State Sonar Search Team—a non-profit volunteer group that uses sonar to find missing people, cars, or boats in the water—said in a statement posted on Facebook and shared by Port Orange Police that they had joined the search for Heikka on the second anniversary of his disappearance. "Over the next 7 months, we conducted a 30 mile long ground search and sonar searched over 70+ bodies of water between Orlando and his home in Port Orange," the organization said. "After coming up empty on those searches, we all felt we needed to go back to the area of his last cell phone ping. This particular area was searched heavily by multiple sonar teams with no luck.

"During a ground search conducted in November of 2022 on Pioneer Trail we discovered a small canal in the woods. This tiny body of water was set back 75 feet from the road and was covered by trees and thick brush. At the time of the search, we had no sonar equipment and the canal looked extremely unlikely considering the surroundings and size of it. We returned to this body of water, five months later for a second look at it. We discovered the water levels had dropped 50% in this area since our last search. Using a special piece of sonar equipment, we checked the depths of this tiny canal. Realizing the canal was only 4 feet deep we made a visual inspection from end to end. That is when we discovered Robert's vehicle at the far end sitting upright with the roof partially exposed. Ken from Recon Dive Recovery dove on the vehicle and confirmed the license plate. We immediately contacted the detectives from Port Orange PD."

Heikka was last seen leaving his home in his white 2020 Chevrolet Impala and his cell phone was tracked to the area of I-4 and State Road 44 before becoming inactive. Missing person flyers were circulated and searches were undertaken to find him with little success.

He had worked for the Volusia County school system since 1989 and taught at Creekside Middle School in Port Orange from 2002, Florida local news website ClickOrlando reported.

According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, some 600,000 people go missing in the U.S. every year.

Searches are particularly difficult when victims disappear in the water. The missing Lotus drummer Chuck Morris and his 20-year-old son Charley were found dead at the weekend, some 24 days after the pair went missing during a kayaking trip in Arkansas. Underwater drones were used by officials searching for the pair in water that reached a depth of 180 feet in places.

Meanwhile, receding water levels at Lake Mead, on the border between Nevada and Arizona, has exposed several bodies, with officials fearing that hundreds more could be waiting to be found. One set of human remains was found inside a barrel with police believing the person was the victim of a mob killing in the late 1970s.