DELRAY BEACH, Fla. — The search continues for 31-year-old Makuach Yak, a youth basketball coach from Delray Beach who has been missing since Saturday morning.
"Rain or shine, I've been out here since Saturday night and I'm not going to stop until we find him," Nyadow Chol, who said she's close friends with Yak, said. “Very out of character for him. He’s not like this at all. He’s the one checking up on everybody.”
A group of friends assembled a search party outside Merritt Park in Delray Beach on Thursday to look through a 2-mile radius around Yak's house.
This is the fifth day of searching for any signs of him with even one family driving down from Iowa after hearing the news.
"Everybody that interacts with him will literally tell you that he just, he brings a light to everyone around him," Bidong Yak, Makuach’s younger brother, said. "My dad. He’s our male role model, so he’s kind of the one that’s really holding his composure, but my mom is really the one that is going through it because that’s her baby right there. He’s her first born."
Bidong said Delray Beach police have been helping with the search but need help from the community for answers.
"I really would appreciate and would like is just kind of the home cameras, and then also if the police connections can look at the different street cameras pretty much," Bidong Yak said.
"I've been all the way down to Boynton Beach to Boca along A1A, we've had a lot of families that live in West Boca just plastering Makuach's face on any kind of street sign, any kind of bulletin board, anything you can think of," Tate VanRoekel, who he said he’s been best friends with Yak for 11 years, said.
VanRoekel was the last one to see Makuach after dropping him off Friday night.
“Most missing people are 2 miles within their last known position,” VanRoekel said. “Whatever you got to do get back to us buddy and we’re going to do whatever we can to find you.”
VanRoekel said he's followed up on every lead and call, saying they may have seen his friend, but still no sign of him.
"We’ve had some misidentifications, we have had somewhere we’ve actually showed up right after a person called thinking it was him and we see the person that they thought it was and it's not Makuach," VanRoekel said. "It feels like you got punched in the stomach. I believe he’s just out there, but we have not found him yet.
Yak is 6-foot-4 and was last seen wearing a purple shirt.
There is a $20,000 reward.
"I don’t want to ever believe that someone would want to harm another human," VanRoekel said.
If you have any information or if you may have seen Yak, you are asked to contact authorities,
