Four Village Idiots Drown Canoeing in Icy Waters - two of the four have been identified as Christopher McQuillen and Lanny Patrick Sack, 20, of Winnetka - all four went to New Trier High School

Friends say they should have used a black canoe, because nothing black EVER TIPS!

Christopher McQuillen had been home in Winnetka over the holidays when he told his father he was going to Wisconsin with some friends.

The exchange was so routine that McQuillen's father, Joe, said he didn't remember the last things he and his son said to each other.

But Sunday, the elder McQuillen said, he received a call from a relative of his son's friend "explaining that he was lost, and they weren't sure what that meant."

McQuillen soon learned his 21-year-old son had disappeared after taking a canoe out on an icy lake in southern Wisconsin about 2:30 a.m. Sunday.

"He was just gone. He kind of slipped through our fingers like water," McQuillen said by phone Monday. "But he knew he was loved."

For suburban Chicago's North Shore community, that grief was multiplied by the news that not one, but four young men, all who hailed from Winnetka and Wilmette and who attended New Trier Township High School, were presumed dead in the accident.

By Monday, authorities searching Mill Lake in Walworth County, Wis., had identified the remains of the first two men recovered as those of Christopher McQuillen and of Lanny Patrick Sack, 20, also of Winnetka. A third body was recovered, but authorities had not released that man's name as of late Monday. The search for the remains of the fourth victim was due to resume Tuesday morning.

CLICK FOR MORE