That I can't answer not being a local, but the whole story just doesn't ring true to me. As a mother, my first instinct would be the welfare of my child & not a car, the last thing I would do is remove his method of transportation away from him. I would contact the ticketing agency & explain the situation & why the car could not be removed, also if I believed he may have intentions of self-harm I would not wait 2-3 days to report that, it just all sounds pre-planned to me.
Well, I suppose they could have just moved the car to a different place and left a note on it. Might still have gotten a tow. Maybe LE knew exactly whose car it was? I would wager that they did.
I agree it does sound pre-planned. But I don't think that BL is your typical adult child, and I think his parents may have been quite tired of his...um...errant behavior, so they may well have wanted to make sure they kept the Mustang and didn't have to pay impound fees, as opposed to (once again) bailing out BL for his weirdness (that's assuming they really thought he went hiking).
But you've nudged me off the fence. They obviously didn't think he had gone hiking (or was at risk of suicide) or they would have behaved differently and would be behaving differently now.
OMG WFLA going over comments that maybe Brian is in his parents house.
I am a frequent LE critic but I do trust that the FBI knows how to search a house!
Well, I wonder if they actually went up into the attic or into the warren of boxes in the garage. It looks like a big solid mass of boxes in the garage, but there could easily be a carton of Brian.
They certainly didn't open every box, I would guess. It looked like they did the standard search.
So yeah, he could have had a hidey hole in the house. Anyone who builds an impromptu staircase so that their kid can bolt over the back fence is capable of keeping a large box for him to hide in, in the middle of a bunch of other boxes. FBI would have needed a lot of time to clean out that garage that day, and it would have been visible from outside the house.
Some have mentioned that pillar-like thing in his bedroom, but I can't see from the picture whether the drywall was structured so as to make an opening. I do wonder why it's there. Perhaps just weird house construction. There are certain states of mind, cognitive conditions, where the subject likes to hide, seeks a small space, etc.
Indeed, Van Life has real appeal to such people and both Alex Honnold and his mom have spoken about his mind qualities, which make him favor Van Life.
I hate when technology glitches like that.
