On the night of July 29, 2015, Steven McCall, a 25-year-old father from Fort Lauderdale, was last seen alive after leaving Lucky’s Bar in downtown Fort Lauderdale. He got behind the wheel of his white 2013 Ford Fusion and drove north toward Pompano Beach. A gas station camera captured him at 2:32 a. m.
The Sun Sentinel later reported the time as 2:45 a. m. , while Sunshine State Sonar put it at 3:30 a. m.
What is certain is that the footage shows McCall in a dispute with the occupants of a silver sedan. The video jumps four minutes forward and shows the same sedan parked behind McCall’s Fusion at the pumps. When McCall’s car leaves, the sedan speeds off after it, and both vehicles disappear from view. Investigators said there was no evidence the sedan’s occupants were involved in McCall’s disappearance.
Nearly 200 bodies of water were searched. Nothing was found. The way the father told it later: “I sometimes dream that he’s coming home. It won’t be like I’m going to open the door and he’s there.
”
There was a brief confrontation. Then McCall turned right from the gas station, headed across Sample Road, and was never seen or heard from again. Detectives wondered whether he got on the highway north or south. His father believed that if he had gotten on the highway, he would have gone south, toward home.
For ten years, the family had no answers. Some thought McCall had been chased and killed. Others believed he had crashed while trying to escape. Whatever the theory, the family waited a decade to learn what happened to him.
In the same year as the disappearance, a small group called Sunshine State Sonar took up the case. Its founder, Mike Sullivan, said he got involved after watching one of the family’s videos. Over more than three years, the team conducted more than 400 searches. Their method was patient and systematic.
They looked at the possibility that McCall had taken Interstate 95 in the opposite direction. “We haven’t done that yet. Let’s go ahead and try to do that,” Sullivan recalled. They went to the spot, and there it was.
North, not south, as everyone had assumed. About thirteen miles along I-95, in a pond in Boca Raton, the search ended. Three years of searching for Steven McCall finally came to a close. They found him.
On October 2, 2025, the Sunshine State Sonar team recovered McCall, still inside his car. The medical examiner confirmed the identification through dental records. The father put it plainly: “Because I kept asking God: you have to show us where he is. I want to know where he is.
” When the news came, it was a mixture of shock and relief. He had told everyone that he would rather that day come than never come at all. Ten years was a long time. The police said the investigation into how McCall ended up in that pond was still ongoing.
The central question remained unanswered: was it an accident, or was someone pursuing him that night? The father’s belief remained strong, even if he acknowledged he could be wrong: “You don’t follow someone the way they followed Steven on video without a reason. ”
For the family, the decade of uncertainty was over. The search was done.
McCall was home at last.