As the missing passenger, Brad Solomon III, remains missing in Cozumel, Mexico, a family member reports that authorities’ search and rescue efforts have turned into recovery efforts.
Solomon has been missing for nearly two weeks. Though authorities and civilians conducted several searches in Isla de la Pasión, they failed to find him.
Family members also flew in from the United States to help look for the 66-year-old Charleston, South Carolina resident. Adding urgency and complexity to their mission is Solomon’s frontotemporal dementia diagnosis, a neurodegenerative disorder that lists impulsivity, disorientation, and difficulty communicating as symptoms.
Solomon’s wife, Mimi Hyer Solomon, was with him before disappearing. According to her, the involvement of several government agencies initially posed challenges, but these were resolved after Mexico’s military forces headed the operation.
Though search efforts first focused on the city, the groups have moved on to the jungle. Last Friday, Daughter Savannah Miller hoped that Solomon could be under the care of local citizens occupying the jungle’s communal areas.
| On April 14, Solomon’s cousin, Martha Warren, confirmed what many feared—that Brad may no longer be alive. “…a full search continues with officials and volunteers, the focus, however is shifting,” she wrote on Facebook yesterday. |
Warren elaborated, “Our love for Brad is true as evidenced by the work of so many family members on the ground in Cozumel, we have so been hoping and wanting to find Brad alive. But now we must face the nearly insurmountable evidence to the contrary,”
Solomon’s family members also noted that the AirTag he had with him seems to have stopped working.
His daughter, Savannah Miller, shared a plausible chain of events using information the family has. According to the account she shared with a Charleston-based publication, the couple debarked from Icon of the Seas. It temporarily parted to use the bathroom near the Cozumel cruise terminal. When Solomon came out first and didn’t see his wife, he left to look for her. His wife soon realized that Solomon was missing and raised the alarm.
Some of their family stayed on the cruise ship while Solomon’s wife rode in a security guard’s car to comb the streets. Miller said they didn’t catch him because he walked quickly when anxious.
The family has set up a GoFundMe to help relieve the financial burden of travel expenses and recovery.
As the hope of finding Solomon alive dwindles, the family continues to hope for the best despite the odds. In one of Miller’s posts, she wrote, “Our family is incomplete without all 3 of us. We will find him and bring him home.”
