A 20-year-old Dandridge man drowned Tuesday while swimming with several friends on Cherokee Lake, Jefferson County Sheriff G.W. "Bud" McCoig said today.

The sheriff identified the victim as Justin Wade Banks.

Authorities were alerted at 7:39 p.m. of a drowning on the lake near the Black Oak Marina. McCoig said the victim was swimming with four other people, all of whom are younger than the victim.

The drowning occurred in a cove equipped with a tree rope that swimmers use to swing out over the water, McCoig said. The group decided to swim to an island about 25 yards away when the victim went under the water and failed to resurface.

The sheriff said members of the Jefferson County Rescue Squad located the man's body a few minutes after arriving at the scene.

According to Banks' Facebook page, he was a 2010 graduate of Jefferson High School in Lafayette, Ind., and most recently worked as a grill cook at a local Perkins restaurant in the Dandridge area.