Teen Goes Missing While Visiting Florida and Had Texted ‘Help,’ Mom Says (Exclusive)

An 18-year-old from North Carolina vanished last week during an out-of-state trip to reconnect with some relatives, according to his mom — and she says one of his last messages now haunts her amid his bizarre disappearance.

Giovanni Pelletier traveled to Florida in late July with his mother, Bridgette Pelletier, her fiancé, Jeremy Brown, and Giovanni’s four siblings to visit a relative who was completing chemotherapy, Bridgette tells PEOPLE.

Giovanni had been looking forward to the trip: After he turned 18 in April, he expressed an interest in getting to know his biological father’s family in Florida, where he was born and had lived until about age 4, when he moved with his mom to North Carolina. (His parents were never married.)

Bridgette, 34, says she was supportive.

“He was craving the culture and the background from his dad’s side of the family, and I couldn’t give that to him,” Bridgette, who is of Italian and Puerto Rican descent, says of Giovanni, whose father is African American. “So I wanted him to have those opportunities with his dad’s side.”  

Before his family left for Florida, Giovanni joined a text group chat with some of his paternal relatives. He arranged for three cousins on his dad’s side to pick him up from Englewood, Fla., where he was staying with his mom, siblings and his mom’s fiancé, Bridgette says.

She had reservations about him going alone, but she fully trusted her son.

Brown saw Giovanni off when the teen’s cousins came to get him around 1:30 a.m. local time on Friday, Aug. 1. Bridgette, who had been studying for an upcoming pharmacy board exam, was asleep.

Within 30 minutes, Giovanni twice texted her — including a brief message: “Mom help.”

He called her at 1:56 a.m. and via FaceTime a minute later and texted her sister and her father asking for help when he couldn’t reach her.

Bridgette says she didn’t see the missed calls and texts until about 6:20 a.m. on Friday, when she also realized she had a missed call from one of the cousins who had been in the car with Giovanni.

That call was placed nearly an hour after Giovanni was picked up, she says.

“He only called me that one time,” she says through tears of her son’s cousin. “And then no effort was made to communicate with me. No effort was made to come back to the house to let me know.”

The situation grew stranger, Bridgette says: Giovanni’s paternal grandfather, where Giovanni had been headed with his cousins, left her a voicemail alleging that there had been some type of altercation between the young men and that the cousins had left Giovanni on the side of the road in Bradenton in Manatee County.

“He said he didn’t have all the information but for me to let him know when I found Giovanni,” Bridgette says.

She tried, unsuccessfully, to reach Giovanni and then went looking for him through the GPS data on his phone.

“When I got to where it [his phone] was, his bag had been left on the side of the road, it was his phone and his backpack, and he wouldn’t have left that,” she says. “My son eats, sleeps, showers, breathes his phone.”

A short time later, she reached some of the family on Giovanni’s dad’s side.

The cousin who had called her overnight, before Giovanni disappeared, told her the group smoked marijuana with Giovanni after they picked him up and that Giovanni then began to panic. The cousin also claimed that Giovanni cursed at him, prompting a confrontation on the side of the road during which Giovanni allegedly pulled out a knife.

“When that happened, they said they wrestled the knife from him, and then my son took off running,” Bridgette says.

She describes that behavior as unlike her son — she gushes about his integrity and character — but believes he likely felt threatened and outnumbered.

However, the story the cousin told, according to Bridgette, differs from a narrative released by the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office.

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They said in a statement Saturday, Aug. 2, that Giovanni had been traveling north on I-75 with his cousins “who advised Giovanni suddenly began to act erratically before exiting the vehicle and walking away near SR70” in Manatee County.

The sheriff’s office, which is working the case with law enforcement in Brevard County, did not respond to a request for comment from PEOPLE. (The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office referred inquiries back to Charlotte County.)

Bridgette says she believes her son’s cousins know more than they have disclosed and that none of the three have helped her or other relatives and volunteers search for Giovanni in Charlotte and Brevard counties.

“None of these kids that were with him have tried to call me and ask me if I found him, asked me if he’s okay, asked me anything,” she says. (The other relatives in this story could not be reached for comment.)

Bridgette has also been disappointed in what she calls a relatively lackluster law enforcement response, which she contends has been influenced by her son’s age.

She feels the response would be different if Giovanni were younger.

The eldest of her five children, Giovanni has a heart of gold and “is the kind of kid that, when you meet him, you know he’s going to impact people’s lives,” Bridgette says.

A protector by nature, she says, he always looked out for others, including one of his younger brothers who has autism.

A $10,000 reward is being offered for any information leading to Giovanni’s whereabouts or to an arrest and conviction, Bridgette says. A GoFundMe has been launched to aid in the search efforts.

“The thing that tells me that something is wrong is my son knows my number by heart,” Bridgette says. “It’s the only number that he knows by heart, and my son would never run away and text me, ‘help me,’ because he knows that I would burn this world down to find him and that I wouldn’t be scared of anything or anybody, and I’m not.”

“But,” she continues, “I feel so helpless right now because I have no direction.”