BANGOR, Maine — When Elaina Breunig answered the phone Friday evening, a member of the Maine Warden Service informed her the body of her son, David, who had been missing for two months, had apparently been found in the Penobscot River.
She immediately drove to Bangor from her home in Westbrook and learned her son’s driver’s license and wallet were found with the body recovered from the river. She knew it was David, even though positive identification from the state medical examiner’s office was still pending, she said.
Messages left with the medical examiner’s office and Maine Warden Service Tuesday were not returned.
“They’re waiting for positive identification. I understand. It’s protocol,” Elaina Breunig said from her home Tuesday morning.
Given the circumstances surrounding David Breunig’s disappearance, his mother wrote in his obituary that he drowned.
“No one will really ever know what happened that night,” she said. “We assume he fell in the river. There is nothing to believe elsewise.”
Breunig, 21, of Westbrook, disappeared in Orono on Friday, Feb. 26.
A student at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine who was visiting friends at the University of Maine, Breunig left a party on Crosby Street in Orono at around 11:30 p.m., and his phone last pinged a local cellphone tower at 12:05 a.m. Feb. 27, officials have said. He was heading to meet friends on Mill Street and was last seen walking toward the train tracks near a railroad bridge that crosses the Stillwater River. The Stillwater flows into the nearby Penobscot River and at the time of his disappearance was high and fast moving.
For two months, search crews scoured the banks of the Penobscot River and the water as far away as Stockton Springs, more than 35 miles downstream, for clues of the missing man.
At 6:15 p.m. Friday, someone at the Sea Dog Brewery along Bangor’s waterfront spotted a body and called police. Emergency responders recovered the body from the Penobscot River near the Veterans Remembrance Bridge a short time later.
“I was sad, because I was really holding out hope that he was held up somewhere and couldn’t get away,” Breunig’s mother said. “I know that wasn’t realistic, but that is what I held onto. I needed to hold onto that. But now I’m able to bring him home and have closure.”
Breunig is survived by his parents, David and Elaina; a younger brother, Derek, who is a freshman at Maine Maritime Academy; a sister, Danielle, who is a junior at Westbrook High School; and many friends in Westbrook, Orono and at MMA, where he was a junior studying marine engineering technology.
He has friends flying in for the funeral from out of state, Breunig’s mother said.
MMA president William Brennan issued a letter to the community Tuesday morning, after receiving confirmation David Breunig’s body had been recovered.
“In early March our community came together at a vigil of hope for David’s survival, and together we held each other up that evening,” Brennan said. “We have continued to do so over the past weeks as search-and-recovery efforts continued. It is our strength as a family that we shall draw upon as we bear this loss. Though we are in sorrow now, we will continue to persevere as David would have us do. And we will hold him in our hearts as a member of the extended Maine Maritime Academy family forever more.”
He was a team player, even when he wasn’t the star player, which made him a natural leader and someone his friends and siblings could look up to, Breunig’s mother said.
“Now his friends have closure, the community has closure, MMA has closure and we have closure,” Elaina Breunig said.
Visiting hours for David Breunig are from 4 to 8 p.m. Friday at Westbrook High School, with additional time if needed. His memorial Mass will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at Saint Hyacinth Church in Westbrook. A reception will follow.
“Each of my kids gets a hug and an ‘I love you’ every time they leave the house,” Elaina Breunig said. “The last time [David] left the house, I hugged him twice.”