MELBOURNE, Fla. — The car came across the sonar screen as a bright block in a sea of oranges and reds.
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To many, it would be an unimpressive feature 24 feet under the surface of the retention pond off Viera Boulevard. But to Sunshine State Sonar co-founder Mike Sullivan, it offered a surprisingly quick end to a four-month search.
“I don’t think there was any question that this was going to be her,” he said, when he and his team members dove down and saw the 2003 Honda Odyssey for the first time.
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Inside the van, the remains of professor and mother of three Katya Belaya, who vanished in 2014 after telling her daughter she was going out for a quick trip to the store.
She was found 1.6 miles from home.
Sullivan said one of the group’s followers contacted him in August and shared posts about the case. His team was not the first to search for Belaya – deputies and four or five other sonar teams tried – but he said they decided to start from square one.
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Sullivan estimated there were 400 to 500 bodies of water within a few square miles of Belaya’s home. The search was narrowed after detectives shared the location of Belaya’s last cell phone ping.
Still, it took 50 hours of working maps and debating – plus a day of searching 33 total ponds – before the big discovery.
“We thought that this was going to be a very solvable [case],” Sullivan said. “I just thought that this was one of those cases that was going to go 400 or 500 bodies of water before we found her.”
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Sullivan called his group’s 15th find emotional.
Sunshine State Sonar has racked up solved cases at an impressive clip since its founding in 2023. Sullivan said they were working more than 70 cases, mostly in South Florida.
“We’re so happy that we can do this for this family,” Sullivan said. “I know it’s not closure. We always say it’s never closure for these families. It’s answers to where their loved one’s been.”
The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office said it was investigating Belaya’s cause of death, though due to the condition of the remains, it may never be confirmed.
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