Missing angler’s family: ‘We need to help him’
Eight days after man’s disappearance, relatives ask for more volunteers, boat
His whole life, fishing was a way for Gregory Nacios to find peace.
By day he was a corrections officer at Phoenix state prison in Skippack Township. He didn’t live far from Lake Nockamixon in Bucks County, where he frequently took his boat, Explority II.
Eight days ago, a 911 caller reported Nacios’ abandoned boat on the lake with his personal belongings on it but no sign of him.
“He was in his element,” his older sister Courtney Nacios Bell, of Medford Township, New Jersey, said Wednesday, more than a week after his disappearance on the lake. The family is asking the public’s help in searching for his body, and wants any civilian with a boat or any type of searching capability to come to authorities’ aid, she said.
“The more eyes the better,” Nacios Bell said.
Nacios, 43, of Harleysville, comes from a large family of five siblings and 13 nieces and nephews. His younger relatives helped name the boat, and his life preserver bears the name of his niece, Amelia.
“He would do everything it took to help us, now we need to help him,” Nacios Bell said.
Nearly a dozen local fire and dive units and state agencies have been searching the water and land near the spillway in the southeast section of the lake, where his abandoned boat was found, said Nockamixon State Park Manager Obie Derr.
They’ve been using boats with sonar technology, and two drones overhead from the Point Pleasant fire company and Bedminster police, said Point Pleasant Chief Scott Fleischer. Dozens of volunteers have been walking the shorelines, state trooper Christopher Nacios — Gregory Nacios’ brother — among them every day, his sister said.
This week, authorities shifted the operation from rescue to recovery, The Intelligencer of Doylestown reported.
Nacios was a gentle giant with a soft heart, a “43-year-old kid,” and an experienced angler, often taking nieces and nephews out with him, his sister said. “His boat was his baby,” she said.
Anyone with information that could help state police should call the Dublin barracks at 215-766-5031.
The family’s full statement reads: “The mother and family of the missing boater, Greg Nacios, requests that anyone in the area of Lake Nockamixon with a boat and/or searching capability and is willing, would offer their time and resources to look for and recover our brother’s body. Time is of the essence. The focused area is the wide area near the spillway, on water and surrounding land. Please contact State Police, Dublin Barracks with any information (215-7665031). The family is grateful for any time and effort dedicated to helping us find our beloved brother.