Families call off search for missing Florida teens
OPA-LOCKA, Fla. --The search for the two teens boys who disappeared July 24 during a fishing trip off the Florida Atlantic coast has been called off by their families.
Tens of thousands of miles of beach and ocean were searched since Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen first were discovered missing following what was thought to be a routine fishing trip for the pair of 14-year-olds.
"We love our boys and want them home. Today, our hope becomes our prayer-- that one day Perry and Austin will be returned to us. We thank everyone for their dedicated efforts and support," said the families in a joint statement.
The search for the teens has been mostly fruitless from the start. Although their 19-foot boat was found about 65 miles east of Daytona Beach on July 26, two days after they disappeared, the boat went missing when a marine salvage company the Coast Guard hired went to bring it to shore.
After hundreds of rescue workers fanned out across a massive swath of the Atlantic for a full week, the Coast Guard's search for the two teenage fishermen ended late last month, a heart-rending decision for families so convinced the boys could be alive they pressed on with their own hunt.
That too, however, has ended.
The boys took Austin's 19-foot boat on what their families said was expected to be a fishing trip within the nearby Loxahatchee River and Intracoastal Waterway, where they were allowed to cruise without supervision on July 24. The boys fueled up at a local marina around 1:30 p.m. and set off, and later calls to Austin's cellphone went unanswered. When a line of summer storms moved through and the boys still couldn't be reached, police were called and the Coast Guard search began.
The boys grew up on the water, constantly boated and fished, worked at a tackle shop together and immersed themselves in life on the ocean. Their families said they could swim before they could walk. They clung to faith in their boys' knowledge of the sea, even speculating they might have fashioned a raft and spear to keep them afloat and fed while adrift.
The Coast Guard had dispatched crews night and day to scan the Atlantic for signs of the boys. They chased repeated reports of objects sighted in the water, and at times had the help of the Navy and other local agencies. But after the boys' boat was found overturned Sunday, no useful clues turned up.
The families had held out hope that items believed to have been on the boat, including a large cooler, might be spotted, or that the teens might even have clung to something buoyant in their struggle to stay alive. Even as hope dimmed, experts on survival said finding the teens alive was still possible.