BARTOW COUNTY, Ga. — A close friend of a young man who drowned after jumping off a boat on Allatoona Lake over the Fourth of July weekend, says she and another who were on the boat at time can believed what happened.
“It was a split second. Everything was okay and it’s, ‘Where’s Omil?’ He just went down in the water, no fight, nothing, he just sunk,” Narji Njau told Channel 2’s Tom Regan.
Department of Natural Resources and Bartow County arrived on the afternoon of July 5. They searched for days using sonar equipment.
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Around midnight Monday they recovered the body of 28-year-old Fidel “Omil” Ojway of Lilburn.
“I can’t put a pin on what I’m feeling. It just feels like a void,” said Njau.
Njau said her friend had been out on the lake many times and knew how to swim. She says he was a multi-talented artist who spread joy to everyone he met.
He studied animation at SCAD and was taking classes at Gwinnett College.
“He was an artist, he was a brother, a son, a friend. He was a person who always had a smile on his face. Always put a smile on other people’s faces. He was joy, the emulation of joy,” said Njau.
A GoFundMe has been set up to help the family with funeral expenses.
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