Four months after investigators say they received a lead, State Police divers search the Hudson River for a missing Washington County boy who disappeared more than five years ago. YNN's Matt Hunter reports on continued efforts to find Jaliek Rainwalker.
TROY, NY – "At some point, I mean, Jaliek is somewhere and you never know when some of his remains will be found."
More than five years has passed since she last saw him, but Barbara Reeley still clings to hope that one day her grandson, Jaliek Rainwalker, will be found.
“It's really hard for a grandmother to say, but he's got to be somewhere," Reeley said.
On Tuesday morning, Reeley looked on as State Police divers searched the eastern bank of the Hudson River in Troy. Investigators received a tip following a December news conference at which the investigation was reclassified as a homicide.
"This woman reported it just after our news conference, but it's something that went to back to the year Jaliek went missing, so that's why we chose to do that area," said Cambridge-Greenwich Police Chief George Bell, whose department heads the search for Rainwalker.
Alternating shifts, divers spent more than two hours in the Hudson, but found no signs of the boy who was last seen outside his Washington County home in the fall of 2007. Bell says similar leads will be followed up on in the weeks ahead.
"We have to bring closure to it and it's our job to do that,” Bell said. “So we'll keep going one way or the other until there's some kind of closure, whether it's me or the next guy that takes my spot."
With no suspect ever officially named, investigators appear no closer to finding the boy's remains than they were five years ago, but Reeley remains hopeful her family will one day find an answer.
"It may not be in my lifetime, but I feel that everybody deserves to be put to rest,” Reeley said. “My grandson deserves to be found, as do all missing people deserve to be found."