Mystery of student who went into bar with friends 18 years ago and was never seen again
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: Dateline/NBC
In 2006, a student went out to a bar with a group of friends, only to vanish and never be seen again.
Brian Shaffer was a student at Ohio State University College of Medicine when he and a group of friends had decided to go out for the evening.
Brian was accompanied by his friend William 'Clint' Florence on March 31, 2006 when the pair of them went to the Ugly Tuna Saloona in Columbus’ University District.
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CCTV footage shows the 27-year-old Brian heading up the escalator with William.
After having a couple of drinks in the Ugly Tuna Saloona, they left and went off towards the Arena District and Short North.
Then another friend, whose name was Meredith Reed, offered to give them a lift back to the original bar. So at around 1.15am the CCTV footage again showed the group ascending the escalator to the Ugly Tuna Saloona.
The last time that Brian was seen was less than an hour after this when he was seen speaking to a couple of women.
But after that interaction, Brian disappeared and has not been seen since that evening some 18 years ago.
Shortly after Brian's disappearance, his friend Meredith had tried to call him on his phone, but found that he would just go straight through to voicemail.
After they couldn't contact Brian, Meredith and William left the bar, hoping that they would be able to speak to their friend the following day.
But the pair were never able to get through to Brian.
The student's dad, Randy, also tried to reach out to him after the night out, but he couldn't get through to his son either.
It was at this point that they reported Brian missing and an enormous search operation was launched to try and bring him home.
The last images of Brian show him walking outside of the Ugly Tuna Saloona bar, before going out of shot towards the bar.
One theory of how he disappeared seemingly without a trace was that he exited the bar through a door in the back after changing his clothes.
This door led into a construction site at the time.
But Brian's family did not accept this explanation, saying that it simply made no sense.
In 2020, a photo began circulating of a man in Tijuana in Mexico which sparked hope that it might just be Brian. But unfortunately, the FBI concluded that the man in the picture was not Brian.
If Brian is still alive then he would be 45-years-old at the time of writing, and a reward of $100,000 has been offered for information that leads to his safe return.