Georgia · Ellenwood, DeKalb County · Missing & Alerts

Misty Lake Body Found in Ellenwood, GA: Joanne Howell, 70

A 70-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease walked away from a house on Satellite Terrace on a Friday evening. On Monday morning, a caller reported someone floating in Misty Lake. DeKalb County police are still working out how she got there.

What happened at Misty Lake in Ellenwood

A body was recovered from Misty Lake in the Ellenwood area of DeKalb County on the morning of Monday, Aug. 10, 2026, and was identified as 70-year-old Joanne Howell.

Atlanta News First reported that police were called to the area early Monday to a reported drowning. CBS News Atlanta reported the same starting point in its own words, that police responded after receiving reports of a drowning, and placed the discovery in the 3900 block of Misty Lake on Monday morning.

WSB Radio reported that fire crews responded after a person was seen floating in the water at a small private lake in the Misty Lake subdivision in Ellenwood, and rescuers recovered the woman’s body a short time later. WSB-TV reported that members of the water rescue team used an inflatable boat to recover the person.

FOX 5 Atlanta supplied the clock: the body was found Monday morning, Aug. 10, 2026, around 7 a.m., and removed at approximately 9 a.m.

The woman recovered had been the subject of a missing-person search since the weekend. Atlanta News First, CBS News Atlanta and FOX 5 Atlanta each identify her as Joanne Howell, 70, last seen around 6 p.m. Friday in the 3600 block of Satellite Terrace in Ellenwood.

That is the whole of what has been established. No source compiled for this page reports a certified finding on how Joanne Howell got into the water, though WSB-TV reported police said it appeared she wandered away and drowned, and this report is not going to supply a theory in the absence of one.

Who was recovered: Joanne Howell, 70

Three named outlets identify her. Atlanta News First reported her as Joanne Howell, 70, last seen near Satellite Terrace in Ellenwood. CBS News Atlanta reported that Joanne Howell was last seen Friday, approximately 6 p.m. FOX 5 Atlanta's coverage likewise identifies the subject as Joanne Howell, 70.

The physical description in the missing-person alert came from two of them. Atlanta News First listed her as 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighing 134 pounds. FOX 5 Atlanta listed the same figures in the alert format: height 5 feet 4 inches, weight approximately 134 pounds.

Those numbers are not trivia. They are the reason a description like this exists at all: a height and a weight are what a neighbor scanning a yard, or a deputy scanning a treeline, is actually working from. They were published so that someone might spot her alive.

Nothing else about Joanne Howell appears in the sources compiled for this page. No employer, no church, no length of residence, no family statement beyond the one quote reproduced further down. We are not going to fill that space with invented warmth. She was 70 years old, she lived in Ellenwood, and her family had been looking for her since Friday evening.

Exactly where: Misty Lake and Satellite Terrace

Two locations matter in this story, and they are not the same place.

The place she was last seen is the 3600 block of Satellite Terrace, Ellenwood, DeKalb County. Atlanta News First, CBS News Atlanta and FOX 5 Atlanta all put her there.

The place she was found is Misty Lake. Two outlets attached the same number to it: CBS News Atlanta reported the body discovery in the 3900 block of Misty Lake in DeKalb County, and Atlanta News First reported police were called to the area of 3900 Misty Lake early Monday.

Ellenwood is a mailing address that straddles the southern edge of DeKalb County, and mail addressed to Ellenwood does not all land inside DeKalb. This one does: every outlet compiled here places the recovery in DeKalb County, and the agency named in the coverage is the DeKalb County Police Department. If you are searching this story and finding results that mention Clayton or Henry County, those are different jurisdictions and this incident is not attributed to them by any source here.

No source compiled for this page published map coordinates for Misty Lake or for the house on Satellite Terrace. So this page carries no pin, no address, no satellite view and no driving route. A block number is a block number, and it is where the reporting stops. People still live on both of those blocks.

When she was last seen, and what "Friday" means

The last-seen time is the most consistently reported fact in this story. Around 6 p.m. Friday, in the 3600 block of Satellite Terrace. CBS News Atlanta and FOX 5 Atlanta both give the 6 p.m. time; Atlanta News First places her on that block on Friday without a time.

Now the honest complication, which most aggregators will skip. The reporting here works in weekdays, not dates: Friday for the disappearance, Saturday for the alert, Monday for the recovery. The only full calendar date attached to any of it in the sources compiled for this page is FOX 5 Atlanta's recovery date, Monday, Aug. 10, 2026.

Atlanta News First put the disappearance on Aug. 7, which is the Friday, and counting forward makes the Saturday of the Mattie’s Call Aug. 8. That Aug. 8 label is ours. It is a calendar operation, not a quotation, and we are labeling it as such rather than laundering it into an outlet's mouth. If you are filing paperwork, use the day of the week the agency uses and let the agency's own record supply the date.

The gap that matters is the one between those two points: last seen around 6 p.m. Friday, recovered around 7 a.m. Monday. That is roughly 61 hours in which the reporting compiled here contains no confirmed sighting of Joanne Howell at all.

What she was wearing

The alert described her clothing as a pink bonnet and white shirt. Atlanta News First listed it in that order; FOX 5 Atlanta listed it as a white shirt, pink bonnet. Same two items, same description.

Read that line for what it is. A clothing description in a missing-person alert is a search tool — it describes what she was last seen wearing so that a stranger driving past a ditch or a treeline has something to match. It is not a description of how she was found, and no source compiled for this page states what she was wearing when she was recovered. We are not treating the two as interchangeable, and neither should anyone reading a repost of this story.

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The Mattie's Call, and who issued it

An alert did go out, and the two outlets that reported it date it slightly differently.

FOX 5 Atlanta reported that a Mattie's Call was issued over the weekend. CBS News Atlanta was more specific, reporting that on Saturday, DeKalb County Police issued a Mattie's Call.

Those two are compatible — Saturday is in the weekend — but they are not identical, and one of them names the issuing agency while the other does not. Both are in the comparison table below.

A note on the program itself, offered as background rather than as reporting: a Mattie's Call is Georgia's statewide alert for a missing adult with a cognitive impairment or a disability, the counterpart to the Amber Alert system for children. That general description is The Local Alert's, not an outlet's, and no source on this page is being credited with it.

What the existence of the alert does establish is this: by Saturday, a police department had determined that a missing 70-year-old woman met the threshold for a statewide public alert. That is not a routine welfare check. Somebody at DeKalb County police had already concluded she was at risk.

Monday morning: how the recovery unfolded

Six outlets compiled for this page describe the recovery, and each contributes a different piece of it. Laid end to end, the pieces do not conflict — they simply come from five different newsrooms standing in five slightly different places.

One nuance is worth pulling out of that table rather than leaving it buried. WSB Radio credits fire crews with the recovery. WSB-TV credits a water rescue team using an inflatable boat. In most Georgia counties a water rescue team sits inside the fire department, so those two descriptions are very likely the same responders described at two levels of detail — but no source compiled here states that, so we are not merging them into a single sentence. They appear separately, and they appear in the comparison table.

The other thing the table makes plain: this came in as a reported drowning, not as the end of a search. Two outlets describe the call that way. No source compiled here identifies who made it. Nobody in these sources describes a search team finding her.

Timeline, Friday evening to Monday noon

Everything below is attributed to the outlet that reported it. Where an outlet gave a weekday instead of a date, the diagram gives the weekday.

Steps are ordered by how the outlets described the sequence. The only full calendar date in the reporting compiled for this page is Monday, Aug. 10, 2026, from FOX 5 Atlanta. Friday and Saturday are the weekdays the outlets used.

How far from home? Our sources disagree

Here is the one measurable number in this story that the reporting does not agree on, and it happens to be the number that matters most.

Atlanta News First reported that Howell was last seen near Satellite Terrace in Ellenwood, just under a mile from the lake.

FOX 5 Atlanta reported that the home was located approximately half a mile from Misty Lake.

That is a factor of two, and The Local Alert is not resolving it. We could pull up a mapping tool and split the difference, and it would look authoritative and it would be our measurement, not reported fact. Both figures stay on the page, attributed, unreconciled.

Why it matters more here than in an ordinary story: FOX 5 Atlanta reported that Howell had Alzheimer's disease, dementia, rheumatoid arthritis and two total hip replacements, and that her daughter said the most she would normally walk was to the stop sign up the street and back. Against that description, half a mile and one mile are not interchangeable distances. They are two different accounts of how far a woman with two hip replacements traveled on a Friday evening, and anyone trying to understand this — including her family — deserves to see both rather than a smoothed-over average.

Not to scale, and deliberately so. The two brackets span the identical gap because the disagreement is about the length of that gap, not about where either end sits. Nothing on this diagram should be used to locate an address.

Her health, in her family's words

FOX 5 Atlanta is the outlet that reported Howell's medical history, listing her conditions as Alzheimer's disease, dementia, rheumatoid arthritis and two total hip replacements. Those details are the kind normally published in a missing-person alert precisely because they change the urgency of a search.

FOX 5 Atlanta also spoke with her daughter. Jacquelyn Daniel said the most her mother would normally walk was to the stop sign up the street and back.

That single sentence from a daughter does more work than any official statement in this story. It establishes a baseline: this was not a woman who covered distance. Whatever happened on Friday evening was outside her ordinary range of movement, and her family knew it immediately.

Both of those details rest on FOX 5 Atlanta alone among the sources compiled for this page. That does not make them weaker — an outlet that reaches the family first often has the only interview — but you should know that this thread of the story has one newsroom behind it rather than five, and this page says so plainly rather than implying a consensus that has not been demonstrated.

What people around the lake reported

WSB-TV reported that residents said they saw nothing unusual on the water over the weekend and had no knowledge of anyone missing from the area.

Two things follow from that, and only two.

First, it is not a timeline. Residents saying they noticed nothing does not establish when Howell entered the water, and it does not establish that she was not there. It establishes what a handful of people happened to observe from their own windows and yards across a weekend.

Second, the missing-person alert had not reached them. A Mattie's Call went out on Saturday, per CBS News Atlanta, for a 70-year-old woman last seen in the same Ellenwood area. The residents WSB-TV spoke with said they had no knowledge of anyone missing from the area. Those two facts sit next to each other in the record and this page is not going to draw a conclusion from the pairing. It is simply what was reported, by two different outlets, about the same three days.

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The medical examiner and the autopsy

On Common Ground News reported the step that the television coverage largely passed over: a medical examiner arrived at the scene around 9 a.m. to transport the body for autopsy, and confirmation of identity occurred shortly before noon.

That is a single-source detail, from one local newsroom, and it is worth having because it explains the shape of the day. It also lines up with FOX 5 Atlanta's timing — the body removed at approximately 9 a.m. — without either outlet citing the other.

What an autopsy does and does not settle is worth stating flatly, because families are routinely surprised by it:

• An autopsy being performed is not a finding. It is the examination that may eventually produce one.
• Identification and cause of death are separate determinations. The identity was confirmed on Monday, per On Common Ground News. No cause of death appears anywhere in the sources compiled for this page.
• Toxicology takes far longer than the identification does, which is why death investigations routinely stay open for weeks after the name is public.
• Nobody on this page has ruled the manner of death. Not accident, not anything else.

Cause of death: nothing has been ruled

This is the question every reader arrives with, so here is the direct answer: no cause of death is established by any source compiled for this page.

WSB Radio reported that the investigation remains active, with DeKalb County police working to determine the cause of death. That is the clearest statement of status in the record: the determination is still being worked on, not announced.

Notice what has and has not been said. The call that brought police to Misty Lake was reported as a drowning — Atlanta News First reported police were called early Monday to a reported drowning, and CBS News Atlanta reported police responded after receiving reports of a drowning. A drowning call is a description of what a caller said they were seeing. It is not a medical finding, and it is not a ruling by a medical examiner.

One attributed characterization does exist and this page is not going to hide it: WSB-TV reported that police said it appeared Joanne Howell wandered away and drowned in the small body of water. That is a preliminary account attributed to police, not a certified finding — On Common Ground News reported that an official cause of death has not been determined, police said. Whether her death is ultimately certified as an accident or as something else, whether anyone is or is not being looked at, and whether any charge is or is not under consideration are all unestablished here, and an unestablished thing does not become a story because it is interesting.

Who is investigating, and who is not

One agency runs through the whole of this coverage: the DeKalb County Police Department. CBS News Atlanta attributed the Mattie's Call to DeKalb County Police. WSB Radio reported that DeKalb County police are working to determine the cause of death.

Three outlets carry the status. WSB-TV reported that the investigation into the matter is ongoing, officials said. CBS News Atlanta reported that the investigation into Howell's death remains ongoing. WSB Radio reported that the investigation remains active.

Now the agencies that do not appear. No source compiled for this page reports any role for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Georgia State Patrol, the Department of Natural Resources or any sheriff's office. Those agencies are not interchangeable with a county police department, and readers who see one named in an unrelated Georgia story should not import it into this one. The DNR, for instance, commonly works boating fatalities on public waterways in this state — nothing in the coverage compiled here places DNR at Misty Lake.

What the word "drowning" is doing here

Language is where a story like this goes wrong, usually within a day, so we are being explicit about ours.

"Reported drowning" is how the call came in. Atlanta News First and CBS News Atlanta both describe the response that way. It is dispatch language, describing what somebody phoned in.

"Recovered" is what the responders did. WSB-TV and WSB Radio both use recovery language — a water rescue team and an inflatable boat, fire crews responding after a report of someone floating.

"Investigation ongoing" is the status three outlets give it. It means the file is open. It is not a hint, a signal or a euphemism for anything.

What none of those words are is a finding. A death investigation in Georgia can stay open for weeks with no announcement at all, and the absence of an announcement is not evidence of anything. If you see this story reposted with a confident cause of death attached, check whether the repost names the agency that supposedly determined it. In the reporting compiled for this page, no agency has.

Where our sources differ

We publish the differences instead of picking a winner, because a reader deserves to know which parts of a story are firm and which are still moving. Six named outlets appear on this page. Below is what each one established, and the one measurable point on which two of them plainly disagree.

Read the right-hand column before you read anything else. Five rows in that table rest on a single newsroom. Single-sourced is not the same as wrong — it is a statement about how many independent accounts exist, which is exactly what you cannot see when a story is reposted with no attribution at all.

What we don't know yet

Nothing above is filled in by inference. This page is a record of what was established at the time it was written, and it does not update itself as the investigation moves.

Records, and what this page will not tell you

The DeKalb County Police Department holds the file, so a records request under the Georgia Open Records Act goes to that department, not to a sheriff's office and not to the state.

The Local Alert is not publishing a mailing address, an email address, a phone number or a fee schedule for that office, because none of the reporting compiled for this page establishes one. A wrong address on a page like this costs a grieving family a week, and a plausible-looking guess is worse than an admission. Get the current contact from the department itself.

Two things are worth knowing before anyone files.

Records tied to an open death investigation are routinely withheld until the case closes. Three outlets compiled here — WSB-TV, CBS News Atlanta and WSB Radio — describe this investigation as ongoing or active. A family requesting the incident file this month should expect that answer, and it is not personal.

The autopsy report and the death certificate are held by a different office than the police file. The police department holds the investigative record. The medical examiner holds the examination, and On Common Ground News reported that a medical examiner took custody of the body on Monday morning for autopsy. Those are two requests to two offices on two separate clocks, and neither moves on a family's schedule.

If you are the family reading this: the answers arrive slowly, in fragments, from offices that will not call to explain themselves. The Local Alert is not a law firm and not a law enforcement agency, and cannot tell you what to sign, what to say, or who to talk to.

Frequently asked questions

What happened at Misty Lake in Ellenwood, Georgia?
A body was recovered from Misty Lake in DeKalb County on the morning of Monday, Aug. 10, 2026, and was identified as 70-year-old Joanne Howell. Atlanta News First reported that police were called to the area early Monday to a reported drowning, and CBS News Atlanta reported that police responded after receiving reports of a drowning. CBS News Atlanta placed the discovery in the 3900 block of Misty Lake. Howell had been reported missing after she was last seen around 6 p.m. Friday in the 3600 block of Satellite Terrace in Ellenwood.

Who was the woman found in Misty Lake?
Joanne Howell, 70. Atlanta News First, CBS News Atlanta and FOX 5 Atlanta each identified her. Atlanta News First and FOX 5 Atlanta described her as 5 feet 4 inches tall and approximately 134 pounds. She is the only person the reporting compiled for this page places in the water.

Where is Misty Lake?
Misty Lake is in the Ellenwood area of DeKalb County, Georgia. CBS News Atlanta placed the body discovery in the 3900 block of Misty Lake. No source compiled for this page published map coordinates for the lake, so The Local Alert does not plot it to a point and does not publish a pin, an address or a driving route.

When was Joanne Howell last seen?
Around 6 p.m. Friday, in the 3600 block of Satellite Terrace in Ellenwood, DeKalb County. Atlanta News First, CBS News Atlanta and FOX 5 Atlanta all place her there. Atlanta News First dated the disappearance Aug. 7, and FOX 5 Atlanta dated the recovery Monday, Aug. 10, 2026. The Saturday of the Mattie's Call is therefore Aug. 8, which is arithmetic by The Local Alert rather than a date an outlet printed.

What was Joanne Howell wearing when she went missing?
A pink bonnet and a white shirt. Atlanta News First listed the clothing as a pink bonnet and white shirt, and FOX 5 Atlanta listed it as a white shirt and pink bonnet. That description came from the missing-person alert and describes what she was last seen in, not what she was found in.

What is a Mattie's Call, and was one issued for Joanne Howell?
Yes, one was issued. FOX 5 Atlanta reported that a Mattie's Call was issued over the weekend. CBS News Atlanta reported that DeKalb County Police issued the Mattie's Call on Saturday. A Mattie's Call is Georgia's statewide alert for a missing adult with a cognitive impairment or disability, the counterpart to an Amber Alert for children. That general description of the program is background from The Local Alert and is not attributed to any outlet on this page.

How was the body recovered from Misty Lake?
WSB-TV reported that members of the water rescue team used an inflatable boat to recover the person. WSB Radio reported that fire crews responded and recovered the body after a person reported seeing someone floating in the water. FOX 5 Atlanta gave the times, reporting that the body was found around 7 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 10, 2026, and removed at approximately 9 a.m.

How far was Joanne Howell's home from Misty Lake?
The sources disagree, and The Local Alert is not picking one. Atlanta News First reported that she was last seen near Satellite Terrace in Ellenwood, just under a mile from the lake. FOX 5 Atlanta reported that the home was located approximately half a mile from Misty Lake. That is a difference of roughly double, it goes to how far a 70-year-old woman with limited mobility traveled, and nothing in the reporting compiled here resolves it.

Did Joanne Howell have a medical condition?
FOX 5 Atlanta listed her medical conditions as Alzheimer's disease, dementia, rheumatoid arthritis and two total hip replacements. FOX 5 Atlanta also reported that her daughter, Jacquelyn Daniel, said the most her mother would normally walk was to the stop sign up the street and back. Both of those details come from FOX 5 Atlanta alone among the sources compiled for this page.

Has a cause of death been released?
No cause of death is established by the reporting compiled for this page. WSB Radio reported that the investigation remains active, with DeKalb County police working to determine the cause of death. On Common Ground News reported that a medical examiner arrived at the scene around 9 a.m. to transport the body for autopsy. An autopsy being performed is not the same thing as a cause or manner of death being certified, and no ruling of accident, homicide or anything else appears in these sources.

Which agency is investigating Joanne Howell's death?
The DeKalb County Police Department. CBS News Atlanta attributed the Mattie's Call to DeKalb County Police, and WSB Radio reported that DeKalb County police are working to determine the cause of death. WSB-TV reported that the investigation into the matter is ongoing, officials said, and CBS News Atlanta reported that the investigation into Howell's death remains ongoing. No source compiled for this page reports any role for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Georgia State Patrol or the Department of Natural Resources.

Was anyone else hurt at Misty Lake?
No injury to anyone else is established by the reporting compiled for this page. One person was recovered from the water, and that person was identified as Joanne Howell, 70. Nothing in these sources describes a second person in the water, a rescue attempt by a bystander, or an injury to a responder.

Did neighbors see anything?
WSB-TV reported that residents said they saw nothing unusual on the water over the weekend and had no knowledge of anyone missing from the area. That is what people who live there told a television crew after the fact. It is not a timeline, and it does not establish when Howell entered the water.

When was Joanne Howell's identity confirmed?
On Common Ground News reported that confirmation of identity occurred shortly before noon, and that a medical examiner had arrived at the scene around 9 a.m. to transport the body for autopsy. That sequence, the 9 a.m. transport and the confirmation before noon, comes from On Common Ground News alone among the sources compiled for this page.

How do I get a DeKalb County police report about this?
The DeKalb County Police Department is the agency holding the file, so the request goes there under the Georgia Open Records Act. The Local Alert is not publishing a mailing address, an email address, a phone number or a fee schedule for that office, because none of the reporting compiled for this page establishes one and a wrong address wastes a grieving family's week. Records tied to an open death investigation are routinely withheld until the case closes, so expect that answer while the investigation is active.