Tonight, 7 well-known Belize City men are still missing at sea but there is critical new information to report this evening. First, the boat has been found near Swallows Point - eight miles east of Belize City; it was abandoned and stripped of its engine, fuel containers and canopy. Second, not everything was stolen: police have made an important find on the boat and we'll tell you about that shortly.
But, we begin with the wider story. On Sunday morning at about 9:00, 7 men, who regularly go fishing together, set out for sea. The conditions were very rough as a strong northwester was gusting in. At 11:30 one of them called in to his family saying they were behind St. George's Caye. That was thought to be the last contact. But a critical new piece of information has emerged: as late as 5:30pm Abner Quiroz called his wife. We'll have her story coming up.
But since that last contact, 48 desperate hours have elapsed. And since last night, a massive search and rescue effort has been mobilized. This morning 7NEWS visited Avis headquarters in Ladyville to see what they were doing.
Audrey Matura-Shephard, Spokeswoman for families
"We know the men, they are wise, they are thrifty, a few of them are very familiar with the waters, and I think they have the survival skills to survive in those conditions. It would have to be something really devastating
to have happened to them out there to not be able to survive."
And it's in that certainty and confidence that this morning, friends, family and associates of the seven missing men hunkered down here at Avis Rent A Car in Ladyville. It's the rental agency that two of the missing men, Darrington Escobar and Ismael Quiroz own and operated together. Now it's become the command center for a well-planned, very well resourced effort to find them. This morning we found a team poring over map of Belize to determine where they could have gone missing.
Audrey Matura-Shephard,
"At this point which is 11 hours right now in the morning, we have gotten reports from almost every section where we've sent out for a search party and everything has been in the negative. We've gone all the way south, all the way into Port Honduras, all the way to the tip of the Gulf. We've been all around Turneffe, Glover's, even a bit out into the Blue and so far both aerial and boat response is that there is no sighting of the boat. Just about a few minutes we got a word that there was a boat fitting the description except it doesn't have the canopy on it and it doesn't have the engine on it, just seen floating on the waters somewhere between Banister and Water Caye."
That would be here at Gallows Point where the boat was found completely stripped down at noon today.
