The quest to find missing Gwinnett County teen Justin Gaines will go on after the latest search proved unsuccessful.
The Walton County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday afternoon that efforts to locate Gaines on property near the Walton-Oconee County line turned up nothing, Channel 2 Action News reported.
Crews completed their search of the last of three wells where they hoped to find Gaines, and dive teams searched an old mill pond without success, according to Channel 2.
Authorities had high hopes of locating Gaines after a Walton County inmate, identified as a person of interest in the case, suggested Gaines' body was dumped in a well following his November 2007 disappearance.
On the night of Nov. 1, 2007, Gaines — an 18-year-old freshman at the Oconee campus of Gainesville State College — left his family’s Snellville home to meet up with friends at Wild Bill’s in Duluth.
Gaines reportedly made several calls to friends while looking for a ride home that night, but no one was able to pick him up. Surveillance footage shows him leaving the club around 1:30 a.m. with a cellphone to his ear, and he was also seen outside the club about an hour later.
He hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
The Gwinnett and Walton County sheriff’s offices and the Department of Natural Resources began searching the High Shoals area near the Apalachee River on Monday. They pumped wells on the property, which includes an old mill. The DNR assisted with sonar and a “remote underwater vehicle camera,” a spokesman said.
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