Staff Sgt. Halex Hale Still Missing

UPDATE

Italian police examine body in search for missing US airman
Virginia Pilot
July 11, 2016

MILAN (AP) — Italian authorities are investigating whether a body found in the Adriatic Sea could be related to the disappearance of a U.S. airman some 40 kilometers (30 miles) away.

Missing Aviano airman may have drowned, police say
Stars and Stripes
By Nancy Montgomery
Published: July 11, 2016

VICENZA, Italy — The Aviano airman still missing for more than a week despite a massive search effort may have drowned, Italian police said.

Police — aided by dogs, divers, helicopters and volunteers — called off a three-day search on Sunday for 24-year-old Staff Sgt. Halex Hale. Assigned to the 31st Fighter Wing at Aviano Air Base, he was last seen when he left a friend’s house in Sacile, the small town near the base where Hale lived.

“The most plausible theory for now is that he was inebriated with alcohol, left the house and fell into one of the nearby canals, which were swollen due to particularly stormy weather,” Grigoletto Michele, the national police captain in charge of the search, told NBC News on Sunday.

That theory was disputed by Hale’s father, who traveled to Italy last week from his home in Indiana.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Lance Hale told the network. He said he’d walked the route his son was thought to have taken from the cookout, where he was last seen about 10 p.m.
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