Authorities in Florida are searching for 18-year-old Giovanni Pelletier of North Carolina, who vanished during a trip to visit relatives, leaving behind a series of haunting messages to his mother, according to reports. 

Giovanni had traveled to Florida in late July with his mother, Bridgette Pelletier, her fiancé Jeremy Brown, and his four siblings to visit a family member completing chemotherapy. Bridgette says her son, who turned 18 in April, had been eager to connect with his father’s side of the family, having last lived in Florida as a young child.

“He was craving the culture and the background from his dad's side of the family, and I couldn't give that to him,” said Bridgette, who is of Italian and Puerto Rican descent. “So I wanted him to have those opportunities with his dad's side.”

Before the trip, Giovanni joined a group text with some paternal relatives and arranged for three cousins to pick him up from Englewood, Fla., where he was staying. Bridgette says she had reservations, but trusted him.

Around 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 1, Brown saw Giovanni leave with the cousins. Within 30 minutes, Giovanni twice texted his mother—including one that read: “Mom help.” He also called and FaceTimed her, and reached out to his sister and grandfather when she didn’t answer.

Bridgette, who had been asleep, says she didn’t see the messages until around 6:20 a.m., when she also noticed a missed call from one of the cousins placed about an hour after Giovanni was picked up.

“He only called me that one time,” she said. “And then no effort was made to communicate with me. No effort was made to come back to the house to let me know.”

The situation grew more troubling when Giovanni’s paternal grandfather left a voicemail saying there had been an altercation and that the cousins had left Giovanni on the side of the road in Bradenton, in Manatee County. “He said he didn't have all the information but for me to let him know when I found Giovanni,” Bridgette recalled.

Using GPS, Bridgette located Giovanni’s phone and backpack abandoned on the roadside. 

“When I got to where it [his phone] was, his bag had been left on the side of the road, it was his phone and his backpack, and he wouldn't have left that," she said. "My son eats, sleeps, showers, breathes his phone."

A $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to Giovanni’s whereabouts or an arrest. A GoFundMe has been launched to support the search.

“The thing that tells me that something is wrong is my son knows my number by heart,” Bridgette says. “It's the only number that he knows by heart, and my son would never run away and text me, 'help me,' because he knows that I would burn this world down to find him and that I wouldn't be scared of anything or anybody, and I'm not.”

“But,” she adds, “I feel so helpless right now because I have no direction.”