Relief in Brooklyn’s Italian American community. After more than 36 hours of desperate searches and appeals to local radio and television stations, Alessandro Messina, a 21-year-old Italian-American and Hofstra University student, returned home this morning at dawn. At 7 a.m. the message from his mother Caterina Orlando, Head of the Italian Tourist Board in New York, arrived to reassure us: “Alessandro is back. He is well.”
The missing person alert had been raised by family members around 12:40 p.m. on Sunday, May 19. They had seen him wandering away from his home near the 86th N subway station, in the Gravesend neighborhood. The Brooklyn Police search spread on land and sea, as the area overlooks the bay and is only a few miles from Coney Island.
At the time of his disappearance, he had left home without any backpacks or bags or other personal possessions, creating serious concern once his family realized it. “He left everything at home: keys, credit card, documents and cell phone,” his mother said to La Voce Di New York. “He had told us that he would not be able to attend the commencement since he had not passed and would not be graduating, and this may have triggered a sense of humiliation in him.”
