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NEWS AND EVENTS Teen swimming with friends drowns at lake A 17-year-old Olathe youth drowned thursday afternoon as he swam with friends at Lake Olathe. Four teens - three boys and a girl - were swimming toward a tiny island in the southwest section of the 177-acre lake when the oldest boy went underwater about 3:05 p.m. "Three had distanced themselves a little way from the fourth subject," Olathe Police spokesman Sgt. Greg O'Halloran said. "When they looked back, the fourth subject appeared to be going down." Police did not release the youth's name Thursday evening while they notified his family. The young man's friends could not tell whether he was surfacing because they were facing the sun, they told police. They look for him for a few minutes and then, about 3:15 p.m., called help to the lake, near west Dennis Avenue and South Lakeshore Drive. Divers and other rescuers from Olathe, Overland Park, Johnson County Fire District No. 1 and MedAct rushed to the lake. While the divers swam along the bottom of the chilly lake, water rescue teams launched two small boats. A man and a boy in a canoe and another man in a rowboat joined the search while spectators gathered on the Dennis Avenue bridge. The rescue team focused on part of the lake below cliffs that are popular with divers and on another part of the water just south of the cliffs. Police said they didn't know whether the youths had been jumping from the cliffs. At 4:02 p.m., divers a few feet from the wooded shore found the youth.
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