NARRAGANSETT — They gathered yesterday in Galilee to find answers as well as their missing friend. Wojciech Fudali, 22, a recent University of Rhode Island graduate, avid surfer and nature lover, disappeared Dec. 6 after spending the night at a friend’s house on East Shore Drive in Narragansett. He was last seen near Galilee Escape Road that morning around 10:30. Witnesses said that he wasn’t wearing any clothes.
Yesterday, more than 100 friends, relatives and members of the URI community searched the tidal flats on both sides of the Escape Road next to Point Judith. Armed with maps and emergency phone numbers, they searched on foot and in kayaks. As the students fanned out over the marshes, Fudali’s mother, Anna Fudali of Wilbraham, Mass., said that the pieces of the puzzle simply didn’t add up. Anna Fudali said she spoke to her son three days before his disappearance and there was no hint that anything was wrong. “I just want to find him,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what condition he’s in. We hope he is alive.” A parent is never supposed to outlive a child, Anna said. It isn’t part of the natural order.
Anna said she has been through this before: she lost her oldest son in an accident a couple of years ago. He was almost 23.
Although many acquaintances were stunned by Fudali’s disappearance, his roommate, Zachary Diamond of Newport, said Fudali’s mental attitude had changed in the last few days before his disappearance. “He was questioning things,” Diamond said. “He was on this stint about nature. He said he wanted to be pure.” Fudali seemed to be struggling with profound questions about his existence. Diamond said that Fudali had rejected science in favor of religion and spent time reading the Bible. But he did not seem despondent. “He’s so mentally strong,” Diamond said. “He’s always so stoked to be around his friends. He is such a good kid, so caring and loving.”
A college reunion brought Fudali and Diamond back to URI, where they went to a party with friends. Afterward, Fudali went to stay at the house on East Shore Drive. When his friends woke up late the next morning, Fudali was gone and they assumed he had gone for a walk. When he didn’t return, his friends contacted the police. Anna Fudali, however, said the local police didn’t begin to search in earnest for her son until 12 hours later, at around 11:30 p.m. Kerri Cope, a friend who helped organize yesterday’s search, said
an organization called Search Dogs Northeast volunteered their services, but there was an apparent mix-up in communication between that group and the police and the search never happened.
The police, however, have said that they searched the area repeatedly with dogs and on foot and said that Coast Guard helicopters were called in to scour the waters around Point Judith. The police also called the last numbers Fudali dialed on his cell phone and sent out automated messages to residents in the Narragansett and URI communities, asking anyone with information to contact the police. Meanwhile, yesterday’s search turned up no leads. But friends refused to give up home. As Cope said, “We just want him to come home
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Originally Posted by marakisses
