Officials confirm: Body of missing Jefferson Hills teen found in Mon River

The body of a missing 15-year-old Jefferson Hills boy was found Friday afternoon in the middle of the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh near the Elizabeth Bridge.

Jeno Moretti’s body was recovered at 4:50 p.m. by divers from the Charles County, Md., rescue team, Elizabeth Borough Police Chief Bill Sombo said in news conference with Tribune-Review news partner WPXI-TV. Moretti’s family had reported him as being missing Nov. 22.

Moretti’s death was confirmed late Friday by by the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office. The cause and manner of death were not included in the medical examiner’s report.

Allegheny County Police Detectives were at the scene in Elizabeth, Lt. Nando Costa said.

Moretti’s body was found in the middle of the Monongahela River in about 14½ feet of water, said George McFarland, captain of the Greensburg Fire Department dive team, who was at the site on Friday.

Moretti was last seen in the Floreffe neighborhood of Jefferson Hills, across the Monongahela River from Elizabeth. Cameras captured images of Moretti walking onto the bridge and then returning, but caught a picture of him walking up the steps but never coming back, McFarland said.

The Charles County Dive Rescue, located about 30 miles south of Washington, D.C., used a special side sonar that hovers over the bottom of the river to find an image that appeared to be a body on the bottom of the river, said Charles County Dive Resuce Chief William “Skeeter” Porter. The team searched in 50-foot swaths, up and down the river and from shore to shore, checking the images on the bottom of the river.

One of the challenges of searching for a body in the Monongahela River is the bottom is filled with gravel, Porter said.

“You look at the images and trying to interpret them. You’re looking at the shadows,” and trying to determine if the sonar is picking up the image of a body, Porter said.

“These guys (Charles County dive team) have a great success rate in how they read the sonar. It’s all about interpretation” of the images, looking at the different shapes from different angles to determine what could be a drowning victim, McFarland said.

Before the divers went into the water, the sonar operator was “80% sure” they had located the body, McFarland said.

“A good sonar operator is worth his weight in gold,” McFarland said.

A marker was dropped in the water over the suspected location of the body and one diver followed the rope down to the bottom of the river, while another diver waited in the boat to provide assistance if necessary, Porter said. The body was recovered within three minutes, he said.

A dive team from Christian Aid Ministries of Berlin, Ohio, was able to pinpoint a suspected location of the body earlier Friday and gave the GPS coordinates to the Charles County dive team, McFarland said.

Dive teams had previously searched the Monongahela River in the area of the bridge on Nov. 24 and 25. Some of search centered in the area around the bridge piers, McFarland said.

Elizabeth Borough police and firefighters, Jefferson Hills police and other assisting police, fire and ambulance agencies searched the area around Elizabeth.

“It was a great effort by a lot of volunteers. They worked extremely hard for the week-and-half he was missing,” putting in a lot of hours, with divers in water ranging from 42 degrees to 50 degrees, McFarland said.