A three-day effort to locate a missing 18-year-old who fell into the lower Niagara River has now shifted to a recovery operation, State Park Police reported on Saturday.
Since Aung S. Hia, a recent graduate of Kenmore-West High School, slipped on rocks while fishing and was lost in the river, a bi-national search effort took place involving the Park Police, New York State Police, the U.S. Coast Guard, Niagara Falls Fire Department and Canadian Park Police.
“After an extensive coordinated effort, active search and rescue operations for the 18-year-old male who entered the Niagara River on Wednesday will be transitioning into a localized recovery operation,” a State Park Police spokesman said on Saturday.
State Park Police will continue to monitor the area
A second day of searching has failed to locate a missing Buffalo teen who disappeared into the lower Niagara River on Wednesday morning.
The missing 18-year-old has been identified by New York State Police as Aung S. Hla. No other information about Hla has been released.
New York State Park Police spokesman Capt. Chris Rola said Thursday that helicopters from the New York State Police and U.S. Coast Guard had searched the lower river gorge.
Additionally, Rola said searchers patrolled the lower river on jet skis, between Fort Niagara State Park and the New York Power Authority’s Power Vista as part of the search effort. Officers and investigators with multiple law enforcement agencies also walked the gorge shoreline on Thursday and flew surveillance drones through the area.