COOPERSVILLE, Mich. — Friends and family of an 18-year-old who has been missing since he left a friend's New Year's Eve party spent Tuesday afternoon combing the area he is believed to have gone missing in.
18-year-old Hunter Klompstra was last known to be at a friend's house in the Coopersville area around 2 a.m. Wednesday. According to Capt Mark Bennett with the Ottawa County Sheriff's Office, there were about 20 people at the party. He says most, if not all, of the guests had known eachother since high school.
“We feel we have cooperation of the people involved at this point. We feel we’re getting our questions answered by the people who had last been in contact with him," Capt Bennett said Tuesday. He says they have no reason to suspect any sort of foul play at this point in the investigation.
So while police work the case from behind the scenes via search warrants and interviews with those who were at the party, those who love and miss Hunter are doing anything they can.
“We feel terribly for the family. I mean, I know they would like answers. We would like to give them answers as quickly as we can,” Capt Bennett said Tuesday.
The volunteers met at a property in the 13000 block of 48th Ave. in Coopersville Tuesday afternoon. Organizers had everyone sign in with them, sharing their names and phone numbers so they can make sure everyone is accounted for at the end of the day.
Kathy Geib was one of the volunteers out Tuesday helping everyone get signed in. Geib knows what it's like to hahve a child go missing. Her son, Todd, went missing out of the Muskegon area about a decade ago.
“We know what it's like to go through it and you’re not in your normal mental state, so to plan and do all this, we just thought we’d get here early and pitch in where we can,” Geib told FOX 17.
The Sheriff's Department spent some of Monday doing their own search of the same area that volunteers were canvassing Tuesday. Though they had far less people, police brought some dogs to see what they could find. They also spent some time developing a strategy for moving ahead with their ground search.
Capt Bennett says the department is eager to get their dive unit into a small nearby body of water to see what they are able to locate. The weather has not yet allowed them to do this.
Anyone with information about Hunter Klompstra's whereabouts is asked to call the Ottawa County Sheriff's Office at (616) 738-4000 or Silent Observer at (616) 774-2345.
