Body found in Neversink Reservoir

We were hoping yesterday's widespread flooding didn't claim any lives, but it seems that's not the case.

A body of a woman was found around noon today in the Neversink reservoir, said Zone Sergeant James Rafferty out of the State Police barracks in Liberty.

Her remains are currently being identified, Rafferty said. But the circumstances in which she was found make it likely that she is a missing person who disappeared while driving to work in Milton yesterday morning.

Nancy Lavelle of Willowemoc was reported missing by her family on Friday, prompting a State Police search of the roads along which she commuted to work, Rafferty said.

"We began searching the roads between here and Milton," he said, "and at some point in the afternoon an individual spotted a vehicle overturned in the Neversink River off of Hunter Road."

The car, a 2009 Honda Civic, was registered to Lavelle. It was only reachable by helicopter at the end of Hunter Road, near an intersection with Claryville Road and County Road 19.

"She was not located in the vehicle," Rafferty said. "The door to the vehicle was heavily damaged, having been dragged down the river by the high water."

At 8am this morning, a search was initiated along the Neversink River in Claryville. At 11:45am, a New York City Department of Environmental Protection helicopter found a woman's body in the south end of the Neversink Reservoir near the Neversink dam.

The Times Herald-Record and YNN are both following this story.

Update, 10/3: The body found has been identified as Nancy Lavelle, and many news outlets are reporting her death. She was the only person to have been killed in the floods in New York state that we know of, but storms up and down the East Coast have been deadly elsewhere. Eight people died in car crashes in North Carolina, and a woman died in southeastern Pennsylvania when she drove off a road and into a creek.