Search For Missing Sailor Seamus Gray Shifts South Along Lake Michigan

WAUKEGAN, IL — The search for missing U.S. Navy servicemember resumed Friday, nearly a week after the 21-year-old left Great Lakes Naval Station and headed to St. Patrick's Day celebration at a downtown Waukegan bar.

Personnel from the U.S. Coast Guard, the Waukegan Police and Fire departments, and fire crews from across the country have used sonar equipment, boats and divers to search Lake Michigan around Waukegan Harbor — near where Seamus Gray, a native of Jupiter, Florida, was last seen alive on surveillance video, authorities said.

"Today we focused our search efforts to locate Seamus on the lakefront. This includes searching the beach as well as inland," Waukegan Police Deputy Chief Brian Mullen said Thursday afternoon after search efforts were paused.

"With advances in the technology that we have now, and all the drones we had up in the air, and the lack of foliage on any of the trees this time of year," he said, "we had a really nice ability to see, to cover the ground a lot yesterday, and then re-cover some of those areas again today."

No one has seen or spoken to Gray since he left Ibiza, a bar at 17 North Genesee St., prior to 2 a.m. on Saturday morning. Representatives of the bar said Gray had been asked to leave because he was too drunk. Police said they are no longer able to track his cell phone.

Gray's mother told reporters Thursday that she had been in regular contact with her son on the night before he went missing. She said he was supposed to have gone home and played online games with his younger brother and a friend from Florida.

"There's three things my son lives for: he lives for his family, he lives for God, and he lives for his country," Kerry Gray said. "He came here to fight for his country, and now he's missing, and I'd like everybody's help to find my son."

Gray is a fireman recruit at Naval Station Great Lakes, where he is assigned to the Surface Warfare Engineering School Command.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS, is also assisting with the investigation, police said. The focus of Friday's search is expected to move south from Waukegan toward North Chicago.

The Waukegan deputy police chief was asked if the search for Gray has become a recovery operation.

"At this point, we're just continuing to search for Seamus," Mullen said. "We know he's in excellent shape, and we're very hopeful that maybe he could be out there someplace."

UPDATE: Body Of Missing Sailor Seamus Gray Found In Waukegan Harbor