Found Deceased NJ - Nicholas Pratico, 18, West Windsor, 19 Sept 2017

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It’s just hard for me to think that he’s been hiding out for over month. I HOPE that’s the case, because that means he’s alive and ok. However, it seems unlikely that he’d be away that long with no contact with friends or family.

However, having said that - if he had a fight with his family, or there was some kind of incident, or if he threatened to leave, THE FAMILY NEEDS TO SAY SO.


If, in fact, the police are not taking this seriously, it’s because of the way the parents have acted or something they have said. Something is off about all of this.


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This is not my message but I copied and pasted it from fb

The only details we have publicly known are what was said the first day...it's been a month and nothing has been publicly updated...it was said he had his phone with him but it was turned off at 10:00am, presumably because he was sitting for a placement test at Mercer.

During the course of this search, I have been contacted by various people close to the investigation. This is what I have gathered and feel confident about posting publicly, but this is not official timeline, it is the best that I have been able to put together.

The surveillance photos at the student welcome center are timestamped 3;07pm and that Nick was expecting his Dad to pick him up at 3:30pm after his placement test from earlier in the day ...his sister last heard from him around 3:45 when he responded to her message in regards to signing him up for a West Side Story audition. He was all for it. She messaged him that their father was on his way after that, and the messages were delivering but he was not responding. Nick said he would wait. Nick’s last reply message that Nick sent was "4ish", but i don't know what the message was...His dad arrived around 4pm and couldn’t find Nick. His dad contacted other family members in the area to come over to the school to help look for him. Then after 6:50ish, his phone registered as offline. The police rechecked the last location ping, and his phone was pinged a little before 4 near the solar panels on the campus.

Family showed up on the campus shortly after and searched for him until 12am. Between 4pm and 12am, his family looked for him, tried to get the MCCC security to help them search and check the cameras, and searched not only inside the building, but around the park and outer areas of campus as well. Police were also asked to help but they couldn't do anything because of his age and the protocol in general for missing persons. Police were notified immediately but he was not declared missing by officials until 10pm that night. Nicks parents went back to MCCC and the park around 2am to continue searching for him as well. No one went back home after realizing Nicky was not on the campus. The five days following Nicky being declared missing were spent sending out search parties all over the campus, the Marina/Lake, and MCCC park. My source told me they had over 200+ at each search.

The officials did not get involved until two days later after a search party member found his ID by the Old Trenton Road entrance. An police official came to collect the evidence without proper collection materials, so the evidence was tampered with and not handled with care. Members of the search party guarded his ID as well to make sure that no one would touch it to avoid any implications. Interestingly, the last location ping by the police was at 4pm near the solar panels, which is on the opposite side of the campus from where the ID was found.

Because Nicky is an 18 year old, the police were not taking his case seriously at first, but now they finally are starting to because it has been a month. Most of the heavy legwork has been done by his family and search parties, who spend two weeks constantly searching the areas. Dogs came to sense him, but they did not give clear results because the area already had people on to confuse the scent (classes for students and the Italian Festival).

The family understands that Nick is 18 and does not need to return home, but because it is way out of character, they just want to know that he is safe or if he is in a negative situation.

It’s just hard for me to think that he’s been hiding out for over month. I HOPE that’s the case, because that means he’s alive and ok. However, it seems unlikely that he’d be away that long with no contact with friends or family.

However, having said that - if he had a fight with his family, or there was some kind of incident, or if he threatened to leave, THE FAMILY NEEDS TO SAY SO.


If, in fact, the police are not taking this seriously, it’s because of the way the parents have acted or something they have said. Something is off about all of this.


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Thank you for your very informative post, MinnieVanMommie.

I agree with anonypotomous, along with what knowthings said about why Nick wasn’t driving that day, and perhaps he was somehow being punished. Or maybe someone driving him to campus was the only way the family could get Nick to go to the freshman orientation because he refused to drive himself. I think it’s pretty clear by now he really didn’t want to go to MCCC.

“His dad arrived around 4pm and couldn’t find Nick. His dad contacted other family members in the area to come over to the school to help look for him. Then after 6:50ish, his phone registered as offline. The police rechecked the last location ping, and his phone was pinged a little before 4 near the solar panels on the campus.

Family showed up on the campus shortly after and searched for him until 12am. Between 4pm and 12am, his family looked for him, tried to get the MCCC security to help them search and check the cameras, and searched not only inside the building, but around the park and outer areas of campus as well. Police were also asked to help but they couldn't do anything because of his age and the protocol in general for missing persons. Police were notified immediately but he was not declared missing by officials until 10pm that night. Nicks parents went back to MCCC and the park around 2am to continue searching for him as well. No one went back home after realizing Nicky was not on the campus. The five days following Nicky being declared missing were spent sending out search parties all over the campus, the Marina/Lake, and MCCC park. My source told me they had over 200+ at each search.“

BBM

The above leads me to believe there was something that made them think there was something serious going on immediately. His sister did hear from Nick at 3:45; his dad arrives to pick him up 15 minutes later, and when he cannot find him, he contacts family members to come help him look for Nick. Plus, a mere 6 hours later -though he is an adult-, LE officially declares him missing.

Perhaps something happened earlier in the day, or maybe he had been suffering from depression. Or perhaps the family had just found out he had met someone online that they were concerned about. I’m not sure.

My feeling is that Nick is still close by, and that the area needs to be searched again, and by SAR professionals. We’ve seen over and over how so many are found in an area that has already been searched, sometimes even multiple times.
 
The stuff going on at the school that day was called a “Freshman Orientation” in one article. I remember my freshman orientation... I thought I would make some friends, but I didn’t. I wonder if Nick was already hesitant to attend the CC (based on his friend’s statements and his interest in the theatre School), and if his experience at the freshman orientation just cemented his feeling that he wasn’t going to like it there.

I am afraid this will not end well.
 
I am just hoping that after he finished signing up for classes he realized that this was not for him, called a friend to come pick him up, threw his ID down in disgust and left.


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So sad. At that age, something like having to stay home and attend community college can seem like a “life sentence” if you’ve got other dreams.
 
So shocking. Does anyone know the area? Is it surprising they didn't find him sooner? I thought they searched the area around the school pretty thoroughly.

I know the area, I drive that road every day for work. The park and the college are right next to each other. The park is huge, but it's not as if it's empty. There's people in it daily. I even think they've had a food truck festival of some sort in the park since this has happened, thousands of people go to the events there.
 
So shocking. Does anyone know the area? Is it surprising they didn't find him sooner? I thought they searched the area around the school pretty thoroughly.
The Park is very big and largely wooded with a big lake in the middle. It wouldn't be hard to find a place that's very difficult to discover, although given that they have been searching for him in there from day 1, the monthlong timeframe to find the body seems a little strange if it's been there the whole time.
 
When people are looking, they often don't look up. There have been other WS cases where people are found after a period of time when the change of seasons starts or decomposition takes hold.

RIP NICK. I wish you had been able to find peace without doing this.
 
How could anyone miss this unless he just did it? I’ll be interested to know when they believe he passed.
Such a sad ending.
 
How awful! This is the second thread I've followed recently where a college aged young man disappeared and they both turned out the same way. So very sad. :(
 
Was about to update this because I just got the news on my local patch. Damn. Really shocked it was so close too.
 
So heartbreaking. I have felt all along that his ID pic looked so very sad compared to older photos.

Poor kid, poor family. [emoji853]
 
So heartbreaking. I have felt all along that his ID pic looked so very sad compared to older photos.

Poor kid, poor family. [emoji853]

This is how all of our ID photos look in NJ ever since they switched to facial recognition software at the MVC.
 

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