Divers have recovered the bodies of two missing boys from a detention pond in Danville. Vermilion County Coroner Peggy Johnson says 13-year-old Dierra Shawn Phillips and 14-year-old Lorel Harden were found Tuesday.
Divers have recovered the bodies of two missing boys from a detention pond in Danville.
Vermilion County Coroner Peggy Johnson says 13-year-old Dierra Shawn Phillips and 14-year-old Lorel Harden were found Tuesday. Both boys were from Danville, which is on the Illinois-Indiana border about 45 miles east of Champaign.
Danville Public Safety Director Larry Thomason said Vermilion County Sheriff’s Department divers pulled the boys from the pond.
Johnson says one of the boys surfaced after some of the ice thawed this week.
Both boys, who are originally from the South Side of Chicago, were last seen leaving a community center together in Danville the afternoon of Dec. 13, said Harden’s mother Dorothy Sawyer, as told to her by the boys’ friends.
Sawyer said Harden went missing on his 14th birthday, and she last saw him at 9 a.m. that day.
“He was on his way to community service at the local girls and boys center. When he didn’t come home later that day and it started getting dark, I called the police,” Sawyer told the Defender.
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