BREAKING NEWS – Miami, FL — The United States Coast Guard will suspend its search Friday at sundown for two teenage boys missing at sea for a week.
The two 14-year-olds, Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen, have been missing since last Friday when they took their boat out through Jupiter Inlet into the Atlantic Ocean to fish despite storm warnings. The capsized boat was found two days later. Missing lifejackets gave the Coast Guard hope the boys might be floating at sea, so despite calling the situation “dire,” the Coast Guard decided to extend the search by several days. But Capt. Mark Fedor said at a noon press conference that despite an exhaustive eight- day search, no sign of the boys has been found.
“We went at it with everything we had,” said Fedor, chief of response for the 7th district. In all, they ran 66 searches over 50,000 square nautical miles from Jupiter Inlet to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. They used 26 planes, 4 helicopters, and 31 boats in over 168 hours of around -the-clock searching. The search area was determined by the flow of the Gulf Stream, which flows north at 3.5 knots, he said.
Fedor said the decision to call off the search weighed heavily on officials because many of the searchers have kids the same age as the boys. “I have a 14-year-old and a 13-year-old so the decision to suspend was excruciating and gut-wrenching for me personally,” he said.
Other agencies assisting in the search were the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Bahamian government, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Customs and Borders Protection, and numerous state and local agencies in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Fedor said the group effort accomplished 30 days of searching in an eight day window. “This was a true ‘all hands on deck’ effort,” he said.
Private search efforts are being coordinated through a Facebook page sanctioned by the families. “Find Austin and Perry” had 365,000 members by mid-week. Volunteers all along the southeast coast searched by foot, plane, boat, and even horseback, according to posts.
The Coast Guard said the case isn’t closed, just suspended. If there are new leads, they will reopen the search.
