Coast Guard Mission Critical S1E01 Needle in a Haystack

on this episode of coast guard mission critical the tactical law enforcement team tracks down international drug runners you're hand-picked for this mission plain and simple [Music] we hailed them to stop they did not stop [Music] and in florida search and rescue teams must work around the clock to find a man lost in the vast ocean justin went fishing tuesday morning around six in his boat when he didn't make it back home the last couple times that people have been stranded offshore that they haven't been found i figured he was dead [Music] roger captain we have essence route to your position over you now you gotta get okay [Music] my name is sean cook i'm the ceo commanding officer of coast guard air station miami [Music] air station miami has 350-ish people we have five h-65 helicopters we have five c-144 maritime patrol aircraft our duties are typically a 24-hour duty we usually come on at 1 500 or 3 p.m we get a training flight in and then kind of get some dinner and go to bed we serve coast guard district 7 is 3.8 million square miles south florida is a dynamic aor very unique in the coast guard we do roughly a quarter of all coast guard search and rescue roughly a third of all coast guard law enforcement all right attention brief guys um mission requirements tonight we have uh call out star case coast guard sector miami search and rescue crews are preparing to embark on a mission justin skiff he's reported missing by his mom he's 29 years old he left from sandsprit boat ramp so approximately out here from st lucie inlet he was supposed to be back by 1900 local sector called local police they went out there to the boat ramp and his trucks out there's trailers there so he's definitely still not back my name is kayla skiff and i am justin skiff's sister and he went missing off the sanskrit park in stuart normally when we go out my mom always wants our plan where we're going how far we're going if we're going north we're going south um so he was going out that morning he gave my mom the plan she had called me about 7 30 and said that he wasn't in yet and that the plan was if he wasn't back by seven then to call the coast guard we've never had to make the call before it's pretty awesome rotors for the coast guard in miami you know much about where he goes or where he likes to leave out of uh we always go out of the store inlay we leave out of sanskrit park i told them that we typically go about six seven miles offshore and then we decide if we're gonna troll north or south uh his original plan was to troll south um and they asked if he ever deviates from the plan and i said yeah all the time typically when we when we get cases like this that they've been gone for uh many hours a lot of times unfortunately it ends with not either not finding them or finding them but not in a good state it's been over 11 hours since anyone has seen justin his last known location was given to us some search patterns were made around that area you know we we take into account wind and swells and those currency states they make the pattern based on all those environmental changes the search pattern covers miles of open ocean to take on this enormous task the coast guard relies on a fixed wing hc-144 alpha aircraft nicknamed the casa it's twin engine prop plane we fly slow over the water look for star cases le law enforcement anything like that so it's good at what it does we have uh the costa coming in to do i guess a grid search it's going to be covering 10 nautical miles out about a 20 mile radius looking for that boat they flew all through the night looking for him on mvg's night vision goggles as the casa team searches miles of pitch black ocean on the ground kayla is driving to the last place her brother has been seen my entire drive from fort pierce to stanford park which is about 45 minute drive i just kept trying to check the conditions i was getting more nervous because the they were only going to deteriorate through the night and even worse the next day that made me even more concerned and he's in a 14-foot aluminum john boat i get to the boat ramp the trailer's there there's no sign of him there's police everywhere our sheriff's office has come that they have video footage of him coming out of sebastian inlet at 1300 local yesterday they had approached me with a picture of the boat going out the inlet and they asked me to identify it and him and i was i said yeah that's that's him so that gave me a little bit of hope maybe that they were on to something but that was just him leaving the inlet sector miami now has justin's departure time and fishing plan but it's not enough information to reduce the search pattern the casa still has the daunting task of searching over 200 square miles of open ocean at night you guys uh try pinging his phone or anything like that we have the afrc working on that now and they had flown for eight hours that night searching for justin and that's a max allowable time safely that we can fly the casa is forced to return to home base i was freezing sitting in the back of my my truck on land so i can't imagine how cold he was out there on the water and then i started thinking the only saving grace for him at that point is if he's in the water because it's warmer in the water so i just had all these awful awful scenarios running through my head and then i really started to lose hope from where he put the boat in the water to the st lucie entrance this island right there he pinged at 12 58. maybe the boat doesn't exist at this point skiff was last seen on security camera footage leaving sanskrit park at 1pm i didn't know what to think i've been out there with him a million times and as the minutes went on it just got more and more terrifying i never thought that we would have to call the coast guard [Music] they flew all through the night looking for them and didn't find them in the search pattern they ended up bagging that night bagging means that they had reached their crew mission time they had flown for eight hours that night searching for justin and that's a max allowable time safely that we can fly and he's in a 14 foot aluminum john boat [Music] we had an fls which was a first light search for a overdue 14 foot skiff decasa our fixed-wing asset had just been out there all night covering tons of ground over the water and we're the first light search i'm pretty much up and throwing a flight suit on it immediately because our launch window is within 30 minutes of the call the casa searched all night they didn't find anything we're gonna uh pick up where they left off with the search patterns that sector just sent us at sanskrit park justin's sister waits as the first light search begins i lay down in the back of the my truck i could see the choppers but you never think how big the ocean really is a cold front had come through and it had really turned up the ocean it was like a washing machine with four to six foot waves all over the place he should be offshore about three miles if his boat broke down or something like that he could be on the gulf stream drifting north so our pattern is going to be offshore st lucy out here there's quite a bit of white caps out there where we were so seas were not conducive to finding somebody in a 14 foot white skiff and a giant ocean of white white caps as the helicopter crew continues to cover miles of open ocean sector miami headquarters is searching for digital clues justice may have left behind he had a ping here as he was coming out of dan spirit uh park and then he kind of went over to the east and then the last ping we got was at 1256. that was just him leaving the inlet 24 hours earlier so they have searched stuart beach they searched the stamp lucy inlet they searched hole in the wall that island near the gps coordinate they searched kind of towards the st lucie river and then they redid the icw couldn't go home to my mom and my kids without him i wouldn't do it that's not that wasn't an option for me that was never an option as sector miami searches for justin the tactical law enforcement unit of taclet south prepares to embark on a three-month mission to stop drug runners from smuggling drugs into the united states taclet stands for tactical law enforcement teams it's a high-end coast guard law enforcement capability so we qualify our folks as tactical operators they can do tactical operations for the coast guard non-compliant boardings at sea joseph muse is the commanding officer of the coast guard's tactical law enforcement unit team composition's gonna be myself and i mean through romo uh qualls for this trip they can do tactical operations for the coast guard non-compliant uh boardings at sea and that's a higher-end capability that you see on normal coast guard units who are certified police anticipated threats to is going to be go fast vessels costa rican fishing vessels spss fsvs and lpvs you're hand-picked for this mission you know plain and simple we knew that there was going to be a high volume of work uh this is the most capable ship that is out there and we picked our two most capable guys uh to go out there and represent us and go catch the bad guys [Music] and romo are joining the crew of the united states coast guard cutter monroe to embark on a three-month deployment at sea you guys got blechman on board right yeah i was in bahrain with that dude he's good dude the hardest part about this job is is the job itself and the time that needs committed to it man i'm away from my family for 180 days 160 days at a time [Music] we just grabbed all of our gear we pretty much just go load all of it onto monroe and probably have our first meet with the captain and the xo and go from there [Music] the drug smugglers the amount of c that they have to cover to get uh to the source zone is extraordinarily large so it's both an advantage and disadvantage kind of using that that vast amount of sea trying to hide themselves as a needle in a haystack out there using primarily boats and ships and some logistics vessels to get to land we use helicopters we use what's called airborne use force shooting out the engines of those go fast to stop them by rocking it rocking it in and out we use drones these scan eagle drones can reach altitudes up to 15 000 feet and can fly for 24 hours they are also equipped with state-of-the-art cameras and thermal imaging systems that can relay images and location data back to the mother ship [Music] so just got done with our uh our pre-mission brief we have two tois uh right now one is presumably the pickup vessel one's presumably the drop-off festival um we're not really sure which one is which at the moment i believe the blue ones the drop-off white's the pickup because the area that we're in we're in the uh the arrival zone so typically you have these longer sleeker pangas with the smaller engines take it the long haul and the last little bit will be done by these bigger boats with the bigger wider valves and more powerful engines [Music] so right now we're waiting for the transport to happen once the transfer happens we're going to launch both of our small boats tuba which is the mark ivh and the lri most folks don't know uh that the coast guard is is interdicting about three-quarters of the u.s illegal drugs um that's that's the big majority of the drugs that are being seized or done by the u.s coast guard let's get ready now uh we think that they're done transferring the load so helicopters gonna launch [Music] the adrenaline to doing this or the rush you get there's nothing like it that's it and then you're like all right it's all on you the crew of the monroe alongside the tackler team are tracking two boats in international waters and a surveillance drone is watching as suspected drug smugglers transfer large bales between the two vessels the drone can fly two to five thousand feet and it can capture these incredible images without even being seen or heard basically you know how everybody's been watching two boats there is no longer two boats it's one boat they moved all of the suspect contraband to the second boat the white one now they're all on the white one it's time to go your primary boat that launches first is the pursuit boat in case anything crazy happens they start jettison they throw people in the water anything super crazy they're going to be the initial responders on the scene i am in the pursuit boat we're heading out to intercept the target of interest when you're pursuing a vessel at a high rate of speed going 35 plus knots you're smashing into these three foot waves four foot waves and your body's just it's just taking a toll so we have the helicopter in the air which is uh our hitron or helicopter interdiction tactical squadron so they use two weapon systems up there the m110 is the 7.62 and the m107 is the 50 caliber the big sniper rifle everybody likes they're shooting from a moving helicopter that's shaking around and banging around at a moving vessel that's banging around in the water they're shooting at a target that's about 18 inches by 20 inches i mean there's a lot of good shooters that couldn't do that on land and these guys are doing it daily and they're dropping rounds right on top of each other on these engines we got the locations right off her nose [Music] as the air and water assets move in the target of interest accelerates trying to escape i know what i have to do i have everything that's going through my mind on my checklists my what has to happen i'm thinking about you know where people are going to be how i'm going to get on the boat all right they're not compliant prepare for wearing shots we hailed them to stop to heave two they did not heave two patron used warning shots and disabling fire checkpoints the target of interest ignores the warning shots and continues to move at high speed the tackler team must now use more drastic measures we're authorized to stop them as a non-compliant vessel we expect those guys to use everything from evasive movers ramming techniques primarily we're stopping those vessels using disabling shots into their engines [Music] oh the tackler team has caught up with the suspects but apprehending them safely is another matter [Music] back in south florida justin skiff was last seen leaving sanskrit park over 24 hours ago we went out and started our search pattern there was quite a bit of white caps out there where we were the churned up sea state from the passing storm front continues to make it difficult for the casa and the helicopter to spot justin it was like a washing machine with four to six foot waves all over the place yeah i mean i can't imagine being out here for the whole night and just having to deal with this we kind of expanded our first leg of the search pattern went a little bit north of where it was supposed to start and came back around just to give ourselves just a little extra area to cover we usually go like six miles offshore and then we decide if we're going to troll north or south he had told my mom that he was going south that day and they said well is that definitely where he went i said i could be for the casa we have two pilots in the front and four aircrew in the back two of which are operators of our radar and so they're at a station where they can't see outside so all i can see is the camera and our forward-looking infrared radar or a flare hopefully he's not in the water hopefully he's still with his boat so i don't know how long uh you can drive out here [Music] it was kind of like a defeated feeling that we had already knowing that the casa had been searching all night we just went out did an entire pattern and like still like no signs of justin skip they had sent like a chaplain to come sit with me which is when i really started to lose hope they don't send a chaplain for you know and she had convinced me to try to contact the media rough sea conditions are to blame according to martin county sheriff's office justin went out for a usual day on the water when he didn't make it back home his family worried something went wrong and called for help when the news wanted to do a story and things like that that's when it started to get a little surreal um that this was this was happening he's gone when we go out there we we kind of get in the zone and we're like you know this is our happy place and we're sitting in that boat that very very small boat but you never think how big the ocean really is i got something like two o'clock three o'clock coming right up right yeah my controls i'll put it off the nose marks that position yeah it's it's just a wave i'll keep coming around to the right we'll pick up the search pattern again we're looking for a 14 foot white skiff every white wave looks like a 14 foot white skiff so there was a couple times where we were like oh turn turn right and oh no that was just another wave so it got frustrating a little demoralizing we knew that he was out there somewhere and due to the the sea state and you know the the storm that had passed and knowing how small his boat was it made searching uh very difficult we got about 75 percent done with our pattern and we heard the helo they reported and they were done with their pattern about to return to base they might not be looking for a boat at this at this point in the water we're not expecting to find him you know the conditions are horrible he's in a small boat you know if history repeats itself with south florida the last couple times that people have been stranded offshore that they haven't been found i just at that point i figured he was dead justin was a confirmed missing boater we knew that he was out there somewhere the search pattern follows the gulf stream a strong current that moves north along the florida coast people get caught off guard with the the gulf stream that we know in this area the gulf stream uh generally moves pretty pretty directly north with a very small skiff like that i know it's gonna be difficult for you guys picking them up on radar it could be a p-i-w too temperature's dropping to about 39 degrees pretty pretty cool for south florida all right let's go and head to the plane to cover a massive 200 square mile search area both a fixed wing aircraft and helicopter are deployed we were about 45 miles offshore which was where we thought he may have been yeah hopefully he was prepared enough to when he came out he brought some like food and water with him because his conditions are rough hopefully he's not in the water hopefully he's still with his boat i can't imagine being out here for the whole night and just having to deal with this better weather man during our search just because of the the conditions um our hopes were not super high especially after you know several hours of searching with with negative results we got about 75 done with our pattern and we heard the hilo who was also out there at the same time they reported and they were done with their pattern about to return to base level from the coast guard we're approximately 10 miles to the northeast the chaplain lady she's on the phone and her sad sad eyes just looking at me and then um she hung up the phone and she said will you come with me for a second and i just i didn't start to cry immediately but i knew what she was going to tell me before returning to base rescue swimmer dave muns has an idea i live a little bit closer to uh to where where the search was versus uh where the air station is and uh you know just from local knowledge and and uh spending a lot of time on the water i just had this hunch that because of the currents and because of the gulf stream justin was going to be quite a ways more north than where our search pattern initially had listed in being hey off the nose 12 crazy you see that [Music] we could see that someone was standing on the boat waving us down she just grabbed my face and she said he's alive and i just i collapsed on the ground and um i just i i couldn't breathe i was just i i couldn't believe it we didn't actually know for sure that it was him at that time but if you see a 14-foot skiff out seven miles offshore in those kind of sea state you have a pretty good idea especially one that's waving you down as frantically as he was [Music] and suddenly we heard over the radio we we got him we got justin from the 655 [Applause] [Music] going down roger yeah just hold here if you want to drop me and we'll let it rest away the boat wasn't moving and it matched the picture matched up with what we were seeing uh so we knew for sure that this was justin without actually confirming that it was justin at this point [Music] [Applause] condition of the survivor kind of lean over the onto the boat and um right away i knew it was justin i mean there was no doubt about it i continued our orbit to get further away from dave's that he had better communications with the helicopter so that we wouldn't drown out his radio on on the boat with justin how are you doing you all right scary as hell yeah you're testing right yeah all right cool cool man you uh what do you want to do you want to stay with your boat until a bigger boat comes and helps you out or you want to get hoisted out of here what do you want to do bro down yeah well we can we got a coast guard cutter that's in route it's up to you if you want to uh stay with the boat until that happens nothing more than get the hell off you want off of this boat all right we'll make that happen all right is this boat pretty sturdy for me to come up here we were getting ready to do a press conference to tell the media that he's missing he's been missing for 24 hours and now i get to tell them that he's [Music] alive [Music] belly it was probably the best 30 seconds of my life hearing that he was alive [Music] meanwhile an international waters the crew of the monroe and the tacla team are in pursuit of potential drug smugglers it's one boat they move the suspect contraband into the second boat the white one first thing i see is i see them starting toss stuff overboard they like to throw over gps units cell phones anything that they think that could tie them to illegal [Music] activity and we got one over two over hey birthday things that can go wrong as soon as we jump on board is um yeah pretty much anything they could light the boat on fire they could scuttle the boat they could um start fighting with you they could pick up a weapon they could do all sorts of crazy things and that's why it's extremely important to get positive control of the people on the vessel as soon as possible [Music] start the iss [Music] open that up see any fire or flooding or anything like that give me that what is that give me it give me that one of my biggest fears of getting on board is them sliding the boat on fire no fuego don't lie to me no fuego no fuego one person picking up a lighter can put one of those boats up in flames pretty quickly with 500 gallons gas on board with the suspect vessel neutralized a second team arrives to secure the scene you get on board and you're climbing on cocaine like you have the five guys on the ball of the boat and we have positive control of the helm holding security on two thousand pounds of cocaine five drug smugglers and you're hoping that everything goes right the reporting team over there okay i'm on you and we're gonna conduct the victory on the boat i know based on my training experience that's a bill of cocaine and i'm gonna hold you guys on the front of the valkyr boat and if you move and you try to get rid of this cocaine are you trying to do anything to tamper with it or endanger me or my boarding team you're gonna have problems all right hey oh three tell them though what's that what's happening tell them they're going over there let's go wrap it up back back back right now we just uh we took positive control of the vessel uh being it that there's only three uh boarding team members uh we ended and five subjects we took uh we decided to take the subject off the boat for officer safety and conduct the uh the ride of visit the victor report on board uh one of our small boats if the test returns positive then the tacla team has just seized over 150 million dollars of cocaine god forbid that another colombian drug smuggler boat just doesn't come up and you know kill us or take their drugs back two positive we did our two nick tests on the concert ground we found two positive for cocaine about 38 40 bales of coke we got permission to treat them as detainees and then we took them back to mother we process them we're ready to get off this boat we know what's coming next let's just start throwing some cocaine around [Music] oh the evidence is secure and the vessel once used to smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars of cocaine now sits dead in the water to ensure the boat doesn't become a hazard to navigation a demolition team arrives to sink the vessel all right hold on yeah [Music] being first over justin skiff was found seven miles off the florida coast after spending 24 hours in rough seas he recalls his journey so all night long i weathered the storm like this taking big waves i could lean to the side to keep the boat from flipping all night long i was terrified i was alone like i hadn't heard anything but the thoughts inside my head you know and i could even at one point hear a helicopter and that sound it was like it was like music to my ears you know it was like finally at last i was saved like i wasn't gonna die out here and i saw that helicopter kept going it was like every ounce of hope that i had inside my body was just drained out of me i never felt so small in my life you know and i thought about all like what i'd accomplished in my life and it was so little you know and like i wasn't ready to go yet like and i had this need this desperation to survive but i didn't know what to do i took this knife and i tucked it in my waistband and i told myself i wasn't drowning to death when i was in ninth grade i almost drowned in a surfing accident in new jersey and it gave me this terrifying fear of drowning to death so i made the decision at that point this boat flips if i go over i'm not i'm not trying to swim i'm not trying to float around all night i'm not trying to get eaten by a damn shark i was gonna end it on my terms you know i mean i was gonna go out like champ and man a million thoughts praying through my mind in that moment you know my family you know my poor mother you know the kids my nephews that like that look up to me so much i like i couldn't i couldn't imagine what this was gonna do to them i was thinking about my daughter in new jersey who i haven't seen in years trying to think about like what she would remember me what people would tell her about me and and this is how i was going to go out and for a second it kind of made me a little bit happy like oh at least i'm going to go out knowing like doing what i love you know then i thought how stupid that was like i didn't want to go out at all i wanted to make it home i wanted i wanted to live i wanted to be a dad i wanted to be a uncle i wanted to be his son you know i wanted i want to do a lot of things that i hadn't done and at this moment i wanted to do it you know [Music] we cherish because we've done all this hard work and put in all this time and all this training and just to see it pay off at the end of the day is truly remarkable [Music] justin was very very fortunate in this case that we were able to just kind of come come upon him like a needle in a haystack great to meet you so we're able to meet his sister at the airport there's just so many emotions that you can see on their face is what kind of what i feel later at night when i'm kind of going back over the case in my head and just thinking about how how this could have gone many different ways i want to thank each and every one of you everyone that was part of the crew everyone on the base family friends you guys are amazing man i owe you my life um you know i was i was lost in more ways than one out there and uh since since they saved me and and found me out there i've turned my life around and uh i just became the owner of my own business i bought a landscaping business a new truck me my family we can't express our gratitude man being here seeing this seriously thanks guys you

Channel: Harpoons Inc.

Views: 1,287,695

Rating: 4.8888092 out of 5

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Id: U2g-OztA6w0

Length: 39min 2sec (2342 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 17 2020