"It could have been a swim. It could have been something else," said Jim Held, acting chief of the Lake Forest Police Department. "We don't know right now."
That's what authorities said just hours after a body believed to be that of a missing 44-year-old Lake Forest woman was pulled from Lake Michigan.
The body was discovered Sunday morning a few miles off of a beach in the northern suburb.
Calls for help began around 3:15 a.m. Sunday after the missing woman's husband flagged down an officer on patrol near Forest Park Beach.
The man told police he had gone there to look for his wife when he woke up and could not find her at their home.
He eventually found her car unoccupied in a parking lot at the town's lakefront.
While the missing woman's car and home were searched, emergency crews used night vision equipment and K-9 units to scour the park and beach.
But it was when searchers found an item of beachwear clothing near the shoreline, a woman's sarong that the missing woman's husband said is hers, that the lake search began.
Dozens of responders, divers and boats with side sonar then joined the search.
Their efforts ended at 10:15 a.m. when someone on a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter spotted a woman's body floating in the water about two miles east of the beach.
At this hour, police are still trying to determine the circumstances of her death.
Her name is being withheld pending notification of immediate family.
"We're waiting for a positive ID," Held said, but odds are that's probably who it is."
