Ocoee PD conducts search of Lake Apopka for missing woman

Throughout Memorial Day weekend, Ocoee Police Department worked in conjunction with Sunshine State Sonar to look for evidence in Lake Apopka connected to a missing woman. 

Tracy Ocasio was last seen leaving a MetroWest bar after an Orlando Magic game in May 2009.

She went to Florida Tap Room Tuesday, May 26, 2009, to watch her favorite basketball team play. 

The then-27-year-old was last seen leaving the bar with Ocoee resident James Hataway. 

In the morning of Wednesday, May 27, 2009, her yellow Chevrolet Cobalt was found abandoned on Franklin Street in Ocoee.

Since then, detectives have been hunting down any lead that has come up in hopes of finding Ocasio. 

Over this past Memorial Day weekend, retired Ocoee Police Detective Michelle Grogan, who spends her retirement days investigating cold cases for the department, said Sunshine State Sonar, a south-Florida-based nonprofit, was working with the department to send dive teams as well as Splash the otter to search Lake Apopka. 

Splash is an Asian River otter that is the world's first search-and-rescue otter. He is trained to breathe underwater and the bubbles allow him to smell human remains, Grogan said. 

"We had Splash come out to a couple of our waterways," she said. 

Throughout the weekend, Sunshine State Sonar also had a team of cadaver dogs it works with searching a couple of properties for Ocoee PD in relation to Ocasio's case. 

Although Grogan said she cannot say whether anything was found connected to the case, the searches have given her and the department "renewed hope."

"We're hoping that somebody sees these things we're doing and wants to talk to use about what happened to Tracy," she said. 

Since Grogan started looking at Ocasio's case again, she "brought Tracy home to Ocoee" and re-examined all the evidence. She said she and the department have submitted evidence to Florida Department of Law Enforcement that was processed for DNA, but the DNA did not match her parents or Hataway, who had been a suspect in Ocasio's disappearance. 

The DNA evidence now is going through genetic genealogy, Grogan said.