Following the discovery of a 7-year-old kid’s father and a family friend dead in a bay where the three were boating on Friday near Dauphin Island in Alabama, authorities are frantically looking for the boy.
Three days after going on his first shrimping excursion on Pelican Bay with his father and a buddy in a 22-foot boat, little Hunter Slezak is still unaccounted for, according to relatives and officials.
Before calling off their search on Sunday, Coast Guard rescue personnel discovered the bodies of 40-year-old Michael Slezak and 69-year-old Sam Wooley in a debris field around nine miles south of the island on Saturday.
The heartbroken family, volunteers, and local officials will now be the only ones searching for Hunter.
Megan Slezak, the boy’s distraught mother and Michael’s widow, wrote on Facebook on Sunday, ” I just need the closure of having his body to bury. I didn’t think my heart could shatter any more than this, but not at least being able to find my son’s body is so incredibly painful.”
The three were involved in a boating mishap, according to the family, however it’s unknown what happened to the boat.
According to WKRG on Monday, family members and volunteers were strolling down the beach in the hopes of locating the child while the sheriff’s office searched the water.
The Coast Guard chose to terminate their search after deciding it was no longer a rescue effort, Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch said Monday. However, the chief cop promised to keep looking for the young child using local resources.
He added that the shrimp boat had not yet been found.
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According to Burch, he had a conversation with a local shrimper who knew Wooley, the other victim, and who thinks the boat may have capsized.
