Lawsuits and a damaged iPhone are part of the new details that have been made public on the missing Florida teenagers case.
On July 2015, two fisherman teenagers went missing in Jupiter, Florida, and since then law enforcements have looked for clues to understand what happened to the boys.
Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen, both 14 at the time, went missing on July 24 after they left for a fishing adventure. A new lead on the investigation surfaced when Austin Stephano’s iPhone 6 was recovered from the boat they were sailing.
Sightings of the teens and recovered iPhone
The missing boys were spotted on the day of their disappearance after a storm hit the Florida coast.
According to a report made by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) many leads on the investigation came across the FWC, but none of them were able to verify or locate the missing teens.
The report was 128 pages long and described a sighting of the teens in distress on the same day they disappeared.
Two days after the first sighting many other witnesses have said they saw the teens and have even collected blurry images on what appears to be the boat the teens were on. The same Tequesta boat has been sighted and recovered battered by the sea.
Another report was made by a woman that called the Coast Guard at least three times to report the boat of the boys stranded in the storm and working on their motor. The coast guard wasn’t able to find the boat nor the boys.
According to reports made by the family and friends the teens checked in via text message until Austin’s phone went dead without a battery. Snap messages of the teen have been described by friends, saying he advised they were in trouble.
A pilot saw a person with an orange life jacket near a raft, according to the report he saw two white pieces of debris tied together with a person on their back lifting their arms above their head.
The pilot tried to approach and called the coast guard but lost sight of the person even after searching a few times.
The boat was spotted several times but when officials tried to get a hold of it, the boat drifted away. Authorities knew the iPhone 6 was till in the boat and tried to use phone records to get a hold of the location.
On March a Norwegian cargo ship saw the teens boat and recovered it near Bermuda, the iPhone 6 was recovered along with some fishing gear. The FWC gave Austin’s phone to their family, which made the Cohen’s family file a lawsuit.
Perry Cohen’s family wanted a third party to have the iPhone 6 so more investigations could be held to give both of the families answers on what happened to the teens.
Both of the families have agreed to send the phone to Apple so the company examines the damaged phone and provides some information into what happened.
Source: CBS News