After another restless night, Jon Gusanders left his Gentilly home at dawn on Tuesday and drove 15 minutes to New Orleans East. He was the first to arrive at a search site that, for weeks, had been crowded with volunteers, law enforcement and bloodhounds.

Gusanders, a member of the Cajun Navy, said he had hardly slept since Aug. 14, when Bryan Vasquez — a 12-year-old nonverbal autistic boy last seen in only a diaper — climbed out of a window of his Village de l'Est home and disappeared.

He joined the search last week, combing streets and waterways until nightfall with volunteers who had traveled from as far as Mexico, determined to provide closure for the Vasquez family. Often, Gusanders deployed thermal drones, but never found anything.

That changed on Tuesday morning, when he launch

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