Families Of Missing Florida Teenagers Hope To Find Them Alive As Coast Guard Suspends Search

The Coast Guard is going to suspend the search for Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen, two Florida teenagers who have been missing for a week. The search is going to be suspended at sunset Friday.

While the Coast Guard announced that the search would be suspended, Coast Guard Capt. Mark Fedor said that the search was far from over. He said that crews would get involved again if anything related to the missing teenagers was found.

"I know those statistics will not ease the pain of the families, but I hope at some point in the future they can take solace in the fact that hundreds of people searched thousands of miles because we were committed to finding Austin and Perry," Fedor said, according to NBC News quoted. He went on to call the case "excruciating and gut-wrenching."

Stephanos and Cohen took a 19-foot single-engine boat into the waters off Jupiter, Florida, for a fishing expedition July 24 and disappeared. Even though the boat was discovered around 67 miles east of Ponce de Leon Inlet Sunday, the teenage boaters were not found.

The families of the missing teenagers thanked the Coast Guard in a statement. However, they said that volunteer pilots and aircraft would continue the private search even after Friday. The search for the missing teenagers in waters from South Florida to South Carolina has not been successful, ABC News reported.

The families hoped that the teenage boys were still alive by clinging to something like a large cooler, believed to have been one of the items they might have carried on the boat. According to experts, it is still possible to find the teenagers alive.