Russian-speaking resident of Staten Island disappeared 18 years ago: his relatives still believe in the best and are waiting for a Christmas miracle

It's Christmas season, but for a Staten Island woman whose little brother disappeared without a trace almost 18 heartbreaking years ago, the holiday is still marred by what happened. New York Daily News.

Natalya Voskresenskaya, 44, still hopes that her skateboarding brother Arkady Tashman will be found after his sudden disappearance on January 26, 2005. Since then, nothing has been heard of him.

“I hope there's still a chance,” she said, sobbing on Christmas Eve. - I have a hope".

Tashman was 17 years old when he went missing. The guy left a note under the TV remote in the family's Staten Island apartment with a chilling message: “I'm sorry about that. No awakening, no funeral."

But the body was never found.

No trace of the missing person appeared for 18 years, despite various attempts to find answers.

The NYPD Missing Persons Squad posted a Christmas Eve reminder on Twitter about a long-missing man. He was last seen at a friend's house in Mariners Harbor around 1:30 am on December 26, 2005.

The tweet included both a photo of Tashman at 17 and a visualization of what he might look like now.

The missing man is 182 cm tall, blue-eyed, with brown hair and a pierced ear. Now he is 34 years old.

For Tushman's sister and his parents, each year brings both new hope for answers and fears of the worst.

His older sister spoke of the family's desperate efforts to find the teenager, known to friends as "Ark". They distributed thousands of posters of the missing person, hired a private detective to work with volunteer groups, hoping to find some clue about his fate.

“They searched Staten Island with dogs,” Resurrection said. “We searched the woods around Staten Island and found nothing. Nothing… It broke our hearts.”

Voskresenskaya said her brother had no arguments with family members or any other issues. And that only added to the mysteries of his disappearance. She also recalled her fruitless personal attempts to come up with answers to this case.

“I went to every canteen and orphanage in New York, but I couldn't find my brother,” the older sister said. “I went through the garbage cans to find any clue that would help me find my brother.

“It's a roller coaster,” said Voskresenskaya. “I think maybe I don’t even want to know the truth because he might not be alive.”