Search for missing teen resumes at Hempstead Lake State Park

<p>Searchers returned to Hempstead Lake State Park Monday morning after a missing Westbury teen's parents said they received a text messaged tip about their son's whereabouts.</p>

News 12 Staff

Jul 9, 2018, 2:15 AM

Updated 2,123 days ago

Share:

Searchers returned to Hempstead Lake State Park Monday morning after a missing Westbury teen's parents said they received a text messaged tip about their son's whereabouts.
Police say Louis Germosen, 19, was last seen in June when his friend dropped him off at a house on Roosevelt Street in West Hempstead. At the house, a man who identified himself as Seykou acknowledged Monday that the teen had been there on June 30. Germosen's mother said she last saw him two days earlier.
Then relatives got a secretive tip.
"We got an anonymous text message to Louis' cousin...saying that we needed to come over to this park and search the park and the pond thoroughly," said Germosen's stepmother, Suzanne Bayer. "And then he told us, 'Good luck and God bless.'"
Monday, searchers focused on a wooded area near a pond there.
"It is very thick, dense brush," said Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder. "As you get close to the pond the lilies get very thick, (and) the base of a lily pond gets even thicker as it goes into the water. So we cannot put a boat into that water."
Instead, police plan to wade through the water as they search, he said.
His relatives say they are concerned because he may have been hanging out with people with possible gang ties, including MS-13. Police said they were investigating the possibility but had not yet found any apparent ties.
"We have no information from social media or the information from our gang unit that there is any gang affiliation at this time," Ryder said.
Still, his parents told News 12 they feared the worst in the wake of other teen disappearances in the area that led to gruesome discoveries attributed to gang-related violence.


More from News 12