Father tried to save 14-year-old son in Virginia lake before they both drowned

A family's Memorial Day weekend spent at a Virginia lake quickly turned tragic after a father and his teenage son both drowned. 

According to the Luisa County Sheriff's Office, a 14-year-old boy was struggling in Virginia's Lake Anna on Saturday when witnesses called emergency responders for help. While responders were on their way to the scene, the boy's 42-year-old father jumped in to try and save his son, police said. 

"It was reported that witnesses observed the father struggling, just before losing sight of him as well," the sheriff's office said in a press release. "Several people went into the water in an attempt to locate them but were unsuccessful." 

Upon arrival, emergency officials were able to locate and recover the bodies of the father and son, who were from out-of-state and whose names were not disclosed. They were pronounced dead on the scene. 

The area in which the father and son had been was near an isolated cove on the same side of the lake as the North Anna Nuclear Generating Station, CBS affiliate WTVR reported. That side of the body of water is known as the "hot side."

"The cold side is the public side; anybody can get in to. The hot side is the private side where you have to be an owner or a guest. Never heard about anybody dying on the hot side, you always hear about somebody dying on the cold side, more frequently," one man told the station.

Lake Anna is a roughly 17-mile-long lake that has about 200 miles of shoreline, according to the county. The "cold side" of the lake is roughly 9,000 acres while the other part of the lake is about 4,000 acres, with both sides divided by three dikes. 

In:
• Drowning
• Virginia

Li Cohen

Li Cohen is a senior social media producer at CBS News. She previously wrote for amNewYork and The Seminole Tribune. She mainly covers climate, environmental and weather news.

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