(CNN) -- Shain Gandee, one of the stars of the MTV reality show "Buckwild," has been found dead along with two other people in Kanawha County, West Virginia, authorities said Monday. "This is a very sad and tragic event," Kanawha County Commissioner Kent Carper said. "We live in a very small community. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Gandee family." Gandee, 21, was found dead in a vehicle along with his uncle, David Dwight Gandee, 48, and Donald Robert Myers, 27, authorities said. 'Buckwild' producer talks about the show "Earlier this day after releasing information Shain Gandee was missing, the Kanawha County Sheriff's Office received word of a disabled vehicle in a wooded area near Thaxton Hollow, Sissonville, Kanawha County WV," said a statement from the Sheriff's Office. "Deputies and members of the Sissonville Volunteer Fire Department used all terrain vehicles to access that vehicle, a 1984 Ford Bronco belonging to the Gandee family. The vehicle was in a muddy area along a worn path. Inside were the bodies of three people." In a subsequent release, the Sheriff's Office said the vehicle was partially submerged in mud. It was uneven but upright; its muffler was below the surface. Mud covered the lower part of the Bronco's passenger side door, but the driver's side, where the younger Gandee sat, was free, the Sheriff's Office said. Gandee was happy with life before death He was one of the nine cast members of "Buckwild." The show follows a group of young adults trying to have fun in Sissonville, West Virginia, pulling stunts such as turning a dump truck into a swimming pool or just riding around the woods on their all-terrain vehicles. Gandee was billed as a former high school prom king who had done "every job from coal mining to being a garbage man." 
Was the vehicle fund in the mud?
It was partially submerged in the mud