MELBOURNE BEACH, Fla. — The search for a missing Florida man, whose boat washed up on the shore of Melbourne Beach back in May still running, continues as his family seeks new information.
Dale Hossfield, 68, left the Fort Pierce Inlet around 2 p.m. on May 18 on his 29-foot ProLine fishing boat, according to a WPBF report. His boat was found four days later, washed up about 50 miles north in Melbourne Beach with the motor still running, but Hossfield was nowhere to be found.
The Vero Beach man reportedly asked his brother to go fishing with him, but his brother could not make it, so supposedly Hossfield went out alone.
Four hours later his boat was found, WPBF reports.
"I think there's a lot of things that just don’t add up. I think there are some questions that remain around his disappearance and death," son Gabriel Whalen, a former U.S. Army investigator, said in a statement to the public.
Hossfield's children said it was unusual for their father to go fishing alone and they say the GPS on his boat showed it went out to sea about 40 miles, then turned and came back and then took a sharp dogleg — north to Melbourne, according to WPBF.
"It went out, which was not his normal routine; he was a creature of habit and then it suddenly does some turns and goes all the way up to shore in Melbourne which he never went to," Gabriel said.
There was no indication he was fishing.
"The fact that he was out alone for that length of time and that far from shore doesn’t seem to make sense. He doesn’t seem to be fishing — there was no bait or anything like that on the boat," daughter Melinda said.
"My thought is he got wrapped up in something, and I think, I think somebody was out on the water with him that day, and I think they disposed of him," Gabriel said.
"I really just want to try to figure out what happened to him. I can’t bring him back, but I can try to do anything I can to try and figure out...," Melinda said.
So far, there has been no recovery of Hossfield's body.
According to Florida Today, Hossfield retired from Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City. Records from New York show he has long enjoyed the outdoors. He owned at least one boat there, and he had a fishing license there as of 2014.
Anyone with information about Hossfield's whereabouts is being asked to contact the Coast Guard Sector Miami command center at 305-535-4472 or the FWC.
