Brittanee Drexel is Missing: Police Search Rivers, Highway South of Myrtle Beach

Brittanee Drexel has been missing for a week now. Myrtle Beach Police, other law enforcement agencies, volunteers, family and friends of the 17-year-old New Yorker have been searching the Myrtle Beach area ever since the missing person report was filed at 5 a.m. Sunday morning, April 26. Brittanee Drexel was somewhere she wasn't supposed to be and then she vanished.

Working on tips, police are continuing to search two rivers and a stretch of highway, U.S. 17, south of Myrtle Beach, hoping to find a trace of the missing teenager. Thus far, according to CNN, they have discovered nothing of interest.

Myrtle Beach Police Captain David Knipes says that investigators are following a number of leads at the moment.

Dawn Drexel, Brittanee's mother, knew her daughter was upset about not getting to go to Myrtle Beach with her friends on Spring Break, but did not think anything of it when she stayed the night at another friend's house. But Brittanee didn't do that. Instead, against her mother's wishes, she headed south from Rochester, New York, to the beaches of South Carolina.

But she kept in contact with her mother, talking to her on a cellphone for the next few days until Saturday afternoon, April 25. After talking about soccer cleats for her Brittanee's shoes, Dawn Drexel would not speak with her daughter again. But Dawn Drexel believed her daughter was with a girlfriend in Rochester, not Myrtle Beach. It wasn't until Brittanee's boyfriend, who she was also in constant contact with, became alarmed that she had not called which led him to call her friends. They revealed that they had not seen her since Saturday evening, and she had went to see a friend.

Dawn Drexel told HLN's Nancy Grace that she had all but given up hope in finding her missing daughter. Nancy Grace asked her why. Drexel said that there were too many inconsistencies in the stories of the friends who saw her last. She told Grace that she couldn't talk about a lot of it because it might interfere with the investigation, but she mentioned the fact that Brittanee had very little money, the time frames were not lining up, Brittanee's luggage, and the fact that Brittanee only had abut $100 for her trip (as far as she knew). With her voice getting increasingly despondent, Dawn Drexel said that it just didn't make any sense.

Part of what is not making sense for Dawn Drexel is the story of 20-year-old Peter Brozowitz, who admittedly is the last known person to see her. Brozowitz was the friend from Rochester that Brittanee's other friends said she had went to see. Brittanee Drexel had been hanging out with Peter Brozowitz and three of his buddies, all older than Brittanee, for two days. Brozowitz maintains that he saw Brittanee but she had left his hotel room at 8 p.m. and headed back to her own hotel room, which was one-half mile away.

But John Hahn, a 20-year-old friend of the family, had been contacted by Brittanee's boyfriend, told what was transpiring, talked with Brittanee's friends and then her family, then drove 2 and one-half hours from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina (Hahn is a marine) to Myrtle Beach and filed a missing person report.

Brittanee Drexel's family arrived in Myrtle Beach the next day.

At around 2 a.m., however, Peter Brozowitz left Myrtle Beach. He left behind all his belongings and a $100 hotel deposit. After several people spoke with him after he got back to Rochester, Brozowitz then retained a lawyer and stopped talking.

John Hahn told Nancy Grace Monday evening that he was suspicious of Peter Brozowitz' sudden, suspicious departure, as well as his altered stories.

In another development, video surveillance footage was released showing Brittanee Drexel at her hotel. But it gets the police no closer to finding her.

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Source:

CNN.com

"Nancy Grace," HLN Television