NEW YORK–The Coast Guard has re-opened the search for a missing man in Long Island Sound, after a kayak was found today matching the description of the one he was using when he was reported overdue Sunday.
Fengquan Guan, of Beijing, who was described as wearing a black sweater, black jeans, a dark gray lifejacket with black trim and using a gray two-person kayak, was reported missing at about 2 p.m. Sunday by a friend that he was visiting in Milford, Conn.
The kayak was found at approximately 9:50 a.m. today, swamped along the high tide line at Goldsmith Inlet, on Long Island’s North Shore approximately 15 miles from Riverhead, N.Y. The Southold, N.Y., Police Department found the kayak and then reported the information to Coast Guard Sector Long Island Sound, which had coordinated a multi-agency air and surface search from Sunday afternoon until the search was suspended pending further information Monday night.
The person who reported Guan missing Sunday – a friend he was visiting in Milford, who owned the kayak – verified with the Coast Guard that the kayak found today was the same one used by Guan Sunday.
The Coast Guard has focused a new search effort based on where the kayak was found, and is searching today with a rescue boat crew from Station New Haven, Conn., a rescue helicopter crew from Air Station Cape Cod and Coast Guard Cutter Chinook, from New London, Conn. The Suffolk County, N.Y., Police Department Aviation Unit has also searched in the area today.
The original search for Guan covered a 1,250 square mile rectangular area, spanning from Milford to Hammonasset Point in Connecticut, and from Mt. Sinai Harbor to Horton Point on Long Island, and involved nine agencies. Today’s search area is focused on the area around Goldsmith Inlet on the North Shore of Long Island from Mattituck Inlet to Greenport, N.Y.
Rescue boat crews from Coast Guard Station New Haven, the Coast Guard Cutter Sailfish, Milford Police and Fire Department, West Haven Fire Department, East Haven Fire Department, Branford Fire Department, New Haven Police Department and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, and aviation rescue crews from Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod and Suffolk County Police Aviation participated in the original air and water searches.
