Courtney Balcombe

Creative Editor

clb6264@psu.edu

After nearly two decades, Adventures with Purpose, or AWP, a private diving company has helped bring home a man who went missing in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

Ridley Township police said the divers, who are volunteers with AWP, had been contacted by the missing person’s family, who hoped to help provide closure as to what happened to their loved one in 2003 when he was last seen.

According to Captain James Dougherty of the Ridley Township Police Department, James Amabile went missing on December 4, 2003. He was supposed to pick up his two children from the babysitter, but never showed.

AWP specializes in using sonar equipment to help solve cold cases where a vehicle is involved. When Amabile had gone missing, investigators also listed that his car was also missing, a green Ford Explorer.

After Doug Bishop and his crew of skilled divers and amateur detectives from AWP spent ten hours investigating, they were confident that their sonar had found the Ford Explorer at the bottom of Darby Creek.

According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, on Saturday, March 19, Bishop and his skilled divers plunged into Darby Creek in search of Amabile’s car. After finding the vehicle with remains inside, the team returned on Sunday, March 20, and Bishop and his team worked with the township officials to retrieve said remains.

Teeth were sent to the Medical Examiner’s Office for identification, but no positive identification has been made yet.

In terms of retrieving the vehicle to recover the rest of the remains, Ridley Township Police Sergeant Marc McKinney said on March 20 that the township would decide whether to recover the vehicle or not. He then stated that his department would not comment in detail about the case until a positive identification had been made.

After Amabile’s disappearance, the marina was redone with a new upscale eatery and new boat ramps. Bishop said the builders had unknowingly drilled a pylon directly through the Ford’s engine bay.

The discovery brings near-certain closure to the mystery of what happened to Amabile. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, at the time of Amabile’s disappearance, his family said he wore an insulin pump for his diabetes and could become confused when his blood sugar was too low. They continued to say they had come to believe he was dead because they knew he would never abandon his daughters.