'I want answers' says man of friend who vanished in 2015

TAVARES, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - Deputies with Lake County Sheriff's Office in Lake County, Florida are searching for a man who disappeared in 2015, but he wasn’t reported missing until a couple weeks ago.

Scott Amatuccio, the missing man’s close friend, is the one who contacted the Sheriff’s Office.

“He has two kids that he loves dearly, and it’s not his character to get up and leave and never come back,” Amatuccio said. 

Amatuccio says he hasn’t seen Michael Shaver in years. He says for a while, he chalked it up for their busy lives. But in mid-February, he asked deputies to check on the 36-year-old. 

“I got this gut wrenching feeling that something is not right,” he explained. 

Investigators say they went to Shaver’s home near Clermont. They say they met with his wife, who said she also hadn’t seen her husband since 2015. Deputies say at first, she invited them inside to talk. 

“Upon speaking to her for a few minutes the conversation ended up making its way outside the home at which time she stopped being cooperative and she requested her attorney,” said Lt. John Herrell with the Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday. 

A search for Shaver is underway after nearly three years. 

“I want answers and I think everybody wants answers. Nobody just gets up and disappears out of the blue like this,” Amatuccio said. 

Deputies are calling the case mysterious and suspicious.