The grandson of an elderly couple still missing after the Florida building collapse says he keeps getting mysterious calls from the landline of their destroyed apartment – but there’s no one on the other end.
Jake Samuelson told local outlet WBLG that he and his family have so far received at least 16 unexplained calls from the phone number of his grandparents, Arnie and Myriam Notkin, both in their 80s.
Yet each time he picks up, he can only hear static.
“We are trying to rationalize what is happening here, we are trying to get answers,” Samuelson told the TV station.
He said the first call came on Thursday night, hours after the early morning disaster in Surfside, north of Miami, that has left at least nine people dead and over 150 unaccounted for as of Monday morning.
(AP)
“We were all sitting there in the living room, my whole family, Diane, my mother, and we were just shocked,” Samuelson told the outlet. “We kind of thought nothing of it because we answered, and it was static.”
He recalled that his grandparents usually keep their landline phone right next to their bed in their apartment, No. 302 in Champlain Towers South.
On Friday, Samuelson said his family received another 15 troubling calls from the landline in the collapsed 12-story beachfront condominium building.
The family is now hoping detectives can provide some answers about the eerie communications, he added.
The Notkins are well regarded in their community, with Arnie, 87, a popular retired physical education teacher and wife Myriam, 81, a former banker and real estate agent.
North Miami Beach Commissioner Fortuna Smukler, who grew up with the Notkins’ three daughters, told the Miami Herald that she started to lose hope after learning that the couple lived in apartment No. 302.
“At this point it would be a miracle … we’re hoping for a miracle,” she said.