There has been a wide and extensive coverage on the news regarding two teens that went missing after heading into the Atlantic off Jupiter in a 19-foot vessel. The boys, Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen, both aged 14, went missing on July 24, 2015.
Since last summer, new discoveries and clues of the teens’ fate has arisen. Two days after the boys went missing, the Coast Guard located the boat off the coast of New Smyrna Beaches, but it was lost when they came back to tow it. This was finally explained by the US Coast Guard this year in April. They said the boat slipped away from them and a data marker buoy was attached to the boat. When they came back, the boat had vanished since it was not anchored. The vessel was found again on March 18 by a Norwegian ship about 100 miles off the coast of Bermuda.
The boys had taken the voyage to go on a fishing trip when apparently they were caught in a storm. Nobody saw them after that. The craft was found about 70 miles off the coast of Daytona Beach the first time by the U.S. Coast Guard. When the Norwegian boat found the wrecked vessel, they also found an iphone which was later confirmed to belong to Austin by the Stephanos. Forensic experts at Apple are working hard to try to recover any information from the phone that might provide more leads.
Since the disappearance, families are hoping for the best. The U.S. Coast Guard has been laboring in the search of the boys as more information surfaces. The finding of the boat, however, presented more questions than answers. The families are more hopeful that the boys might still be found alive.
The finding of the iphone also brought about a series of events that led to a lawsuit by the family against Apple’s attempts to bring back to life a phone that was submerged in seawater for eight months.
