ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – Friday's search of water along the route a Green Cove Springs man would have taken home from a wedding in St. Augustine on Sunday located his SUV in a body of water, police said just after noon.
St. Johns County's dive team was called to a pond on County Road 16A at Catherine Towers Lane where Donald Jackson's 1999 Isuzu Rodeo was located. Police said the 35-year-old man's body was inside.
Jackson was last seen at 10:40 p.m. Sunday leaving a wedding in St. Augustine at the River House on Marine Street.
Friday morning, a man with sonar equipment began searching ponds in the area, but police said tire tracks leading to the pond led investigators to find the vehicle. The SUV was pulled from the water and the medical examiner took the body to conduct an autopsy.
The family told News4Jax they didn’t understand how this could have happened.
Neighbors said this area is very dark at night and it can be dangerous because it’s only two lanes.
"It doesn’t take much to a mistake and drop a wheel off (the road), and there’s a lot of deer, turkeys and wild animals out here, so anything could of happened," Tom Byron said.
Byron said it was painful to watch the family learn their son and brother died that way.
"That was just heart wrenching to see them pull up and have to see that," Byron said.
Earlier in the week, Jackson's mother, Alveda Arnold, said she last spoke to her son from Indiana as she was headed home to Green Cove Springs.
“I told him that I love him and to have a nice time,” Arnold said.
After Jackson did not show up for work at Garber Auto Mall this week, his boss went to Jackson's home to check on him. The family immediately began calling area hospitals and filed a missing person's report with the St. Augustine Police Department.
River City Search and Rescue joined police looking for Jackson and leads in his disappearance.
An accident report shows Jackson's Rodeo was involved in a hit-and-run at the intersection of 4 Mile Road and State Road 16 at 11:45 p.m. Sunday, and the person who was hit trailed his vehicle to get the license plate as it exited I-95 northbound at International Golf Parkway.
Police said Jackson's cellphone pinged a tower at I-95 and IGP at 4:30 a.m. and then another at State Road 16 and State Road 13 around 5:30 a.m., which would have been on his route home to Green Cove Springs.
Search crews relied on surveillance video from businesses in the area to track Jackson's progress.
Jackson's parents said that he is not a drug user, is very reliable and always kept in touch with family, so they were concerned that they have not heard from him for several days.