Body pulled from Schuylkill River was that of 21-year-old missing for weeks, father says

The body of a man recovered from the Schuylkill over the weekend is that of Ausar Scott-Thomas, 21, who had been missing for three weeks, according to his father.

William Thomas said he visited the funeral home Tuesday morning to identify the remains of his eldest child, who he said appears to have drowned.

“It was my son,” he said despondently. “I had to look at his tattoo for me to prove to myself that it’s actually him.”

Scott-Thomas had been missing since the evening of March 7, after he and two friends drove to Northwest Philadelphia for reasons that Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore said remain under investigation. One of the friends returned home that night, family and police have said, but Scott-Thomas and his close friend, 18-year-old Quadir Diaz, did not.

Thomas said that in the days after the men did not return home, he and his family, alongside Diaz’s relatives, searched the area near Gypsy Lane and Lincoln Drive, the area along the Wissahickon where the friend said the men were last seen. Loved ones posted on social media, asking for the public’s help in finding them — or leading them to where their remains might be.

But Thomas said his son’s body was likely in the Schuylkill the entire time, swept up in the river’s swift undercurrents and caught on debris along the bottom.

That was until Sunday, when just after 3:30 p.m., the Police Department’s Marine Unit responded to a report of a person floating in the Schuylkill near the Spring Garden Street Bridge. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.

Vanore said that the body had no signs of trauma, and that the Medical Examiner’s Office was working to determine a cause of death.

Thomas said Tuesday that officials have told him his son likely drowned — but how he ended up in the river remained unclear, he said.

Rumors surrounding the disappearances of Scott-Thomas and Diaz have been circulating for weeks, driven in part by family, friends, and sleuths on social media questioning how two friends could disappear, but one could return home safely.

Thomas said the friend explained to him that the men were driving in Northwest Philadelphia when someone started chasing them in another car, and that they tried to flee. He said the friend told him the three crashed the car, with Diaz and Scott-Thomas running one way, and the friend running another.

Somehow, he said, the men ended up in the river. Thomas said that his son was a strong swimmer, but that the strong undercurrents of the Schuylkill were no match.

Vanore said investigators have received multiple tips about what unfolded that night, but are still working to determine what, if any, could be true.

Diaz, meanwhile, is still missing.

Taniesha Diaz, 36, said the news only stirred her greatest fear: that her son, too, was dead. He would never leave his best friend’s side, even in the face of danger, she said.

”He’s not going to leave Ausar, and Ausar is not going to leave him,” she said. “If Ausar jumped in the water, Quadir jumped right with him.”

”We just want to bring them out so these boys can get buried and get some rest,” she said.

Thomas said his son and Quadir Diaz had been friends for years, having lived next door to one another in the East Oak Lane section of the city.

Thomas, who owns a manufacturing business, said his son graduated from Ss. John Neumann and Maria Goretti Catholic High School in South Philadelphia and was enrolled at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology’s electrical engineering program.

“He was my legacy. He was my everything.” Thomas said. “He really could have contributed to society in profound ways.”

But in recent months, he said, his son had started hiding parts of his life, skipping class, and spending more time with Diaz.

He said he tried to keep his son on the right path in college, checking in about his grades, getting him an apartment outside the city, and meeting with a school counselor about job prospects. But something was drawing his mind away, he said.

“My son was loyal,” he said. “I think that’s what happened to him. He was just so loyal to Quadir.”

Staff writer Rodrigo Torrejón contributed to this article.