Several S. Florida Agencies Join Search For Missing Teen
MIAMI (CBS4) - In the midst of a search for a missing 18-year-old in the Everglades of Southwest Miami-Dade, police confirmed late Wednesday night they had found the body of an adult male in a canal.
Miami-Dade homicide detectives did not say if the body belonged to 18-year-old Jesus Trejo.
The recent high school graduate was last seen Tuesday morning at around 9 o'clock.
"Yesterday in the morning he was at my house and he told us he was going to come meet a "white dude" over here at the Everglades," Trejo's aunt Angie Rodriguez said. "We didn't know where specific in the Everglades. Everglades is so big."
Information from friends and family led investigators to Southwest 232 Ave. just off Ingraham Highway in a remote area of Southwest Miami-Dade Wednesday afternoon.
That's where they found Trejo's blue Honda Civic abandoned.
"Obviously we're going to start the search where we have the vehicle," Jorge Pino with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said. "We're still in the midst to see if we can find something unusual or something out of place."
With K-9s on the ground and a chopper in the sky, police divers were eventually called in to assist in the search.
Friends and family stood by feeling helpless.
"He always sends us text messages," Trejo's father, Braulio, said in Spanish.
His parents tried calling his cell phone, but they say Trejo didn't answer.
"He's a good boy," his mother said. "It surprised me that he would come out here," she said in Spanish.
Friends say they offered to go with Trejo, but he told them he had to go alone.
"Nobody could believe it that he got lost," Trejo's friend, Xiomara Lopez said. "What happened to him?"
"We hope for the good, that everything's ok," Rodriguez said. "But our hope is lower and lower every time because now it's dark. How we going to find him?"
