Authorities are investigating approximately 30 submerged vehicles found in a South Florida lake

WFOR

By Amy Simonson and Rebekah Riess, CNN

(CNN) — An underwater search team that specializes in missing persons cold cases discovered approximately 30 cars submerged in a South Florida lake over the weekend, police said.

Dive teams from multiple agencies will be recovering the vehicles from the lake in Doral and “a thorough investigation will take place,” according to the Doral Police Department.

“As of this time, it is unknown if these vehicles are linked to criminal activity nor how long the vehicles have been submerged in the lake,” Doral police said.

A team of United Search Corps divers found the sunken cars while searching the lake this weekend for vehicles connected to cold cases under investigation, the nonprofit’s founder Doug Bishop told CNN Tuesday.

The lake was one of several hundred locations the divers had on their radar to search, and “it just so happened to have 32 cars,” he explained. More than 40 cold cases on are their radar in both Miami-Dade and Broward counties, Bishop said.

The sunken vehicles were not connected to any of the cases they are working on, but police are investigating whether they are linked to other crimes, according to Bishop.

“We were not able to come across any human remains nor were we able to connect any of those to the cases that we were targeting,” he said, adding more data needs to be collected.

Miami-Dade police told CNN their divers were working Tuesday to recover vehicles from the lake with assistance from Miami-Dade Fire Rescue.

According to Miami-Dade police, once each vehicle is recovered from the lake, its vehicle identification numbers will be reviewed to determine which department will take on the case.

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