Giovanni Pelletier, 18, traveled from his home state of North Carolina to Florida with the aim of reconnecting with his paternal family. Soon after, he vanished without a trace.
Giovanni had traveled to Florida with his mother, Bridgette Pelletier, in late July to visit a family member who was in the final stages of chemotherapy. The two were accompanied by the rest of the family. Giovanni is the first of five, and Bridgette is engaged to his stepfather, Jeremy Brown.
Giovanni was reportedly looking forward to the trip because it would be his opportunity to reconnect with his biological father’s side of the family. “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 explained of her son’s desire to explore his father’s side of the family tree. Bridgette shared with People that she was supportive of this decision. She is of Italian and Puerto Rican descent, while Giovanni’s father is African American.
Before Bridgette and the rest of Giovanni’s family left Florida, Giovanni joined a chat group with his paternal relatives. They then made arrangements to meet before he left the state. Apparently, the plan was for Giovanni to be picked up by three of his cousins from Englewood, and together they would head to his paternal grandfather’s residence.
That’s when things started going wrong. Giovanni’s cousins came to pick him up at 1:30 a.m. local time on Aug. 1. His stepfather, Brown, saw him off. It took all of 30 minutes before Giovanni seemingly realized he couldn’t trust the people who had picked him up.
Giovanni texted his mother twice, including one message that ominously read, “Mom help.” In missing person cases, such attempts at communication tend to be very revelatory.
Giovanni reportedly tried to call his mother twice, and also reached out to his maternal aunt and grandfather. Bridgette says she only saw the notifications at 6:20 a.m. the next morning, along with an extra call from Giovanni’s cousin that she also missed. Giovanni’s paternal grandfather went on to leave a voicemail for Bridgette, wherein he claimed that Giovanni got into an altercation with his cousins, so they left him on the side of the road in Bradenton. Wandering alone has already proven to be extremely dangerous this year, so this was understandbly a cause for extreme worry for his mother.
The grandfather refused to provide any comments to the media. Bridgette took it upon herself to track Giovanni’s phone through GPS, only to find it in his bag beside the road — which she considered a red flag, as according to her, her son was previously inseparable from his phone.
Bridgette eventually managed to get through to Giovanni’s cousins. They told her that the young men were apparently smoking marijuana with Giovanni before he started panicking and got anxious them. He then allegedly pulled a knife on them, which they wrestled away. They claim that at that point, Giovanni ran off. Bridgette has called for Florida authorities — who don’t exactly have a stellar record when it comes to standing with their community — to do a better job at tracking her son.
But Bridgette has no plans of giving up.
“He knows that I would burn this world down to find him and that I wouldn’t be scared of anything or anybody.”
Bridgette says there’s a $10,000 reward for anyone who can find her son. She or the police is yet to found a trace of the missing teen.
