A group of volunteer divers, using information gathered by search dogs, are trying to find the remaining bodies of the teens who drowned off the coast of City Island.
Former NYPD diver Mike Carew and students from his City Island diving school have been focusing on two areas in Long Island Sound, hoping to wrest the last two teens from their muddy resting place.
A Syracuse-based search dog team – asked to help by one of the grieving families – brought two air-scenting pooches to City Island twice last month to grid out possible locations where the teens settled.
Both dogs – Mittru, a German shepherd, and Radar, a black Labrador retriever – stood on a motorboat, sniffing the water and reacting to two locations where the canines detected the smell of human decomposition rising off the salt water surface, said Amir Findling, Radar’s owner and team coordinator of Western New York Search Dogs.
Speculating that a northwest wind and an outgoing tide dragged the teens south when they left shore, Carew supervised one of two dives last week that focused on eastern and southern spots laid out by the dogs.
The possible hits were hundreds of feet to the east of Pelham Cemetery, where Max Guarino, 17, Charles Wertenbaker, 16, Andrew Melnikov, 16, Henry Badillo, 17, set off on the night of Jan. 24th with a 7-foot boat stolen from an adjoining marina.
The bodies of Guarino and Wertenbaker have surfaced.
And the divers – who began their search on April 16 – aren’t giving up on the other two.
“Every time we come back with nothing, we see the disappointment in [the families’ faces],” said Carlos Soto, 33, a Bronx microbiologist who takes days off when he can to dive with Carew.