Whelp. Two Florida teens who perished at sea nine months ago may have sent a Snapchat to friends with the message “We’re f’d” just before weather conditions turned bad.
Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos, both 14, left on a fishing trip around 11am on July 24 last year in the Jupiter area off the east coast of Florida, and were never seen again.
It’s thought that they died when a storm whipped up later that day around 1:30pm, bringing winds reaching 32–64km per hour.
Their bodies were never recovered, but last month their 19-foot boat was found off the coast of Bermuda, and with it, Austin’s waterlogged iPhone.
Perry’s phone was broken that day, so all the Snapchats and Instagrams were coming from Austin’s phone. Nobody knows for sure – and probably won’t for some time, if ever – but Austin’s last Snapchat indicates that the boys knew they were in trouble.
The iPhone is now part of a bitter legal dispute between the boys’ families, as they argue over whether the phone should be returned to the family, or handed over to the authorities.
“Millions of dollars of public and private funds were used by FWC and The US Coast Guard to try to find these boys,” the lawsuit from Perry’s mother Pamela Cohen reads. “The public has the right to know what happened to the boys, and what led up to the point of their disappearance.”
