A fundraiser has so far collected over $35,000 on behalf of an off-duty Los Angeles firefighter who went missing while diving in the Port of Long Beach.
The GoFundMe was set up for the family of 29-year-old Connor Lees, who went missing on the night of Dec. 4 while freediving for lobster with a group of three other men on a private boat near the 1200 block of Pier F Avenue.
“He loved the water and everything it brings to our lives,” Robin Jenks, the fundraiser’s organizer, wrote. “It shaped him into the boy, the son, the brother, the friend, the athlete, the surfer, the explorer, the firefighter, the companion, and the man he became.”
Lees was a six-year veteran of the Los Angeles City Fire Department, assigned to Fire Station 94 in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw community, according to the LAFD.
Around 4 p.m. Friday, Dec. 6, the recovery operation was called off “after all reasonable search efforts had been exhausted,” the fire department wrote in a statement.
The search included up to 24 divers at a time, drones and underground sonar along with crews from the U.S. Coast Guard, Long Beach police, L.A. County Fire and L.A. Port police.
Investigators do not suspect any kind of foul play, according to an LBPD spokesperson.