‘Our belief is that Mr. Reinhart is in the water’: police
Police say they’re treating the disappearance of 37-year-old Giusseppe Reinhart on Lake Erie as a missing person case in which there’s no criminality involved.
“Our belief is that Mr. Reinhart is in the water,” Niagara Regional Police spokesman Const. Phil Gavin said.
He confirmed Reinhart, of Niagara Falls, was on parole in Canada when he went missing Tuesday.
A U.S. newspaper has reported authorities are looking into the possibility Reinhart, who served prison time for manslaughter, may have tried to fake his own death.
But Gavin said those “hypotheses and hypothetical situations … aren’t coming from us.”
“I can’t speak to those in terms of what law enforcement agencies may or may not be saying in terms of … faking his own death and things like that. I don’t know where that’s coming from.”
Gavin said the NRP is acting as the lead agency from the landbased side of the investigation, while the on-water search is being led by the U.S. Coast Guard Buffalo Station.
Buffalo Police spokesman Michael DeGeorge said they are not involved in the investigation or the search, while Hamburg, N.Y., police referred media inquiries to the NRP.
Reinhart spent time in prison after pleading guilty in February 2008 to manslaughter in the stabbing of a man during an altercation in the parking lot of a Niagara Falls inn in August 2005.
Pending any new developments, the Coast Guard said it planned to end its search for Reinhart on Thursday night.
“Due to the amount of time that has passed since the man departed on his fishing trip and the ideal search conditions our crews experienced over the course of our searches, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue search efforts at sunset pending any new developments,” said Cmdr. Tad Drozdowski, who is the Coast Guard Sector Buffalo chief of response.
“Our deepest condolences go to the Reinhart family and all those affected. More than 50 people from across the Coast Guard and other Canadian, federal, state and local partners searched thousands of miles with hope of bringing Mr. Reinhart home to his loved ones.”
As of mid day Thursday, Coast Guard search crews completed 65 search patterns covering 13,892 square nautical kilometres (5,364 square miles). The search area covered the entire eastern portion of Lake Erie from Dunkirk, N.Y. on the U.S. side to Port Colborne on the Canadian side and a large portion of the Niagara River.
The U.S. Coast Guard Sector Buffalo said this is its largest search on Lake Erie in recent years.
Responders were scheduled to continue searching for Reinhart until sundown.
The NRP said it was contacted by U.S. law enforcement and rescue services from the Buffalo area Tuesday related to an unmanned 14-foot boat that washed ashore in the area of Wanakah Beach in Hamburg.
The NRP said Reinhart, an avid fisherman, is believed to have launched his boat from Crystal Beach at approximately 5:30 a.m. Tuesday. His trailer and truck were located in the parking lot.
Reinhart often fished alone and was not a strong swimmer, the NRP said.
According to the Buffalo News, family members of the missing man questioned what may have happened out on the water, calling the situation “really suspicious.” Reinhart was supposed to close on a “little dream house” in North Bay on Wednesday, according to the newspaper.
When contacted by Postmedia Network Thursday, several family members, who declined to be interviewed, denied allegations and were angered by U.S. media reports that he may have tried to fake his own death.