Student disappears, found in Montana

A fifth-year Pitt student reported missing in the last week of April was found alive by… A fifth-year Pitt student reported missing in the last week of April was found alive by investigators in a Montana national park two months later.

Pranesh Patel, a 23-year-old electrical engineering student at Pitt, had last been seen by his roommate John Vroom on April 24 during spring finals week, according to Vroom.

Patel’s parents, from New Jersey, reported their son’s disappearance to the Pittsburgh police missing persons unit the following week.

“Slightly after his last final, he went upstairs and crashed,” Vroom said of his last interaction with Patel in their apartment on Chesterfield Street in Oakland. “I woke up at seven the next morning and he wasn’t there. I was thinking he probably went back to Benedum [Hall] and worked on his senior design project.”

Vroom noticed that his roommate had taken his keys, wallet and backpack, but left his laptop and cell phone behind.

More than $1,000 was withdrawn from Patel’s bank account in the days before his disappearance, and Pittsburgh police confirmed he had a suspended license because of a DUI offense in December.

Patel missed his finals and failed to attend the final presentation for his senior design project, according to Vroom and a media alert from the Pittsburgh police.

The search ended two months later when Pittsburgh Private Investigator Chris Findley, hired by Patel’s family, confirmed he had located Patel in Glacier National Park in northern Montana on June 16.

According to Findley, park rangers contacted Patel’s brother, Tarak, three days prior with news that they had seen Patel and deduced he was a missing person.

Findley traveled to Montana the next day, following the lead, checking campsites and “as many places as I possibly could until I found him,” he said.

He did not find Patel in the park, but instead located him in the nearby town of Columbia Falls, Mont.

“I witnessed him and stuck with him,” Findley said of the time period between his arrival in Montana and his first interaction with Patel. “He didn’t know who I was, so I waited until the family arrived.”

Patel’s mother, brother and the private investigator approached him at about 2:50 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Saturday, June 16.

“We all just basically talked for a few minutes, and he said he was coming home,” Findley said.

Glacier National Park would not comment on the matter. It is the park’s policy to “respect the rights to privacy of individuals that enter the parks freely,” said spokeswoman Melissa Wilson.

Patel and his family declined to speak to The Pitt News, and Findley would not comment on why Patel disappeared, what he had been doing since his disappearance, how he arrived in Montana or what his future plans entail.

However, Patel’s roommate John Vroom said at the time of the disappearance, “it seems like he just needed to get out.”

Patel had been under added stress leading up to finals week. His design project for mechanical measurements III, a capstone-like engineering class, was stolen or lost four weeks before it was due, and he needed to retake some classes in a sixth year at Pitt before he could graduate, Vroom said.

Pitt spokesman John Fedele said in June that Patel has not graduated or withdrawn from Pitt, nor has he registered for the fall 2007 semester.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prohibited the University from releasing any other academic information on Patel.

Patel held no job around the time of his disappearance, but Vroom had speculated that he could have gone to Alaska to work as a crab fisherman.

The two had talked about taking the job during the summer after watching the Discovery Channel’s show “Deadliest Catch,” narrated by Mike Rowe.

Patel had researched the job for more than five hours on the Internet, according to Vroom.

Findley maintains that Patel, even in his disappearance, “had done nothing wrong, he was fine.”