Police and fire personnel were at Whitmore Lake Wednesday after a person was found in the lake.

Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

A body was found floating about a half-mile off shore in Whitmore Lake Wednesday.

Emergency personnel were sent to the lake Wednesday morning after receiving a report of a body floating in the lake was called in. There were at least three boats in the water just before 12:30 p.m. Wednesday as a part of the search.

A 46-year-old Green Oak Township man who was fishing on the lake has been missing since Sunday.

Police said Wednesday afternoon they believe it is the missing man, but a positive identification is pending from the Livingston County Medical Examiner's Office.

Around 1:30 p.m., officials were placing what appeared to be a person on a backboard and pulling the backboard out of the water and onto a boat on the west side of the lake.

Whitmore Lake is lined with mostly private properties and only has limited public access, including a Department of Natural Resources boat launch which authorities had closed off for staging.

Residents like Mary Christianson and Angela Ostrom gathered around the lake's edge to watch the efforts. They said the missing man had been the talk of the community since he went missing Sunday and that the body found Wednesday was likely him.

"We feel awful for the family," Christianson said.

There was also some confusion among residents about whether they could use the lake or not for the last couple of days.

"(We didn't want) to be celebrating on the lake knowing he was down there," Ostrom said. "It was ... uneasy."

It's been the longest search resident Chris Nelson can remember in recent times. The longtime resident said the last drowning he remembered at Whitmore Lake was two years ago.

"It’s been a little creepy,” he said of the last few nights on Whitmore Lake. “There hasn’t really been other boat traffic out there. It’s been very quiet and the last couple nights it would be a calm sunset, and you would still see the boats with their police lights on, so it was a little ominous.”

HVA spokeswoman Joyce Williams confirmed medical officials were on scene for a drowning.

AnnArbor.com reporter Kyle Feldscher contributed to this story.

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