BUNN LAKE — A Zebulon man — charged in the drowning death of a friend — didn’t get help for him after a wreck that left the man’s car submerged in Bunn Lake, a highway patrol trooper said.

The body of Jesus Celen Rios-Salvador, 30, of 7305 Little River Circle, was found floating in the lake about 8:30 a.m. Monday, said Trooper T.W. Allen.

Allen said the body was discovered by the driver and several of his friends — the same men who discovered the wreck the day before at about 8:50 a.m. — after they returned to look for Rios-Salvador, Allen said.

Emiliano Luna-Islas, 25, 7305 Little River Circle, the driver of the car, a 1996 Chrysler, was charged with careless and reckless driving, misdemeanor death by vehicle, and felony hit and run.

“It was a big mess,” said Allen. “It took some time to find out who all was really involved in this. They gave us a fictitious name for the driver and the right name for passenger —one of males at the scene.”

Allen said Luna-Islas was speeding as he traveled west on Hagwood Road about 2:30 a.m. Sunday. He said Hagwood makes a T-intersection with N.C. 39 where it borders Bunn Lake.

“The fellow just didn’t stop at the stop sign. (He) was going pretty fast, hit the ditch, went airborne and clipped the top of the fence, and eventually landed in Bunn Lake,” Allen said. ...“Basically he said he just crawled out of the car and swam up on the bank, and laid on the rocks for a while and then he left.”

Luna Islas told Allen he didn’t think anybody was with him.

Allen said authorities didn’t know that anyone drowned until Monday morning around 8:30 a.m. Allen said he heard the call on the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department scanner and returned to the wreck scene.

Allen said Sunday the men at the wreck scene told him that they believed a car of their friend was in the lake because they found a “God Bless America” license plate his car sported on the bank and saw the damaged fence.

“They thought he was in the lake,” he said. “There was no way he could have done all that and not been in there.”

“If they had had been more helpful yesterday (Sunday),” said Allen. “They tried to pass it off on Raphael Vela — that’s just a name they came up with to throw us off (on) who the driver was.”

Allen said the men weren’t charged.

He said a magnetometer — a device that has a magnet attached to a rope — discovered the car Monday morning about 10 feet below the surface of the lake.