FBI Joins Search for Missing College Student in Philadelphia

— -- The FBI is now involved in the search for a college student who mysteriously vanished Thanksgiving morning after leaving a Philadelphia bar, with authorities increasing a reward in the student’s disappearance to $25,000.

Philadelphia police are scouring the city – even canals – for any sign of Shane Montgomery, 21, a student at nearby West Chester University.

His disappearance is so baffling that the FBI has joined the case. Montgomery was out with friends and his cousin at Kildare’s Irish Pub, a bar in Philadelphia’s Manayunk neighborhood, on the early-morning hours of Thanksgiving, Nov. 27. Police say he left the bar on foot, and hasn’t been heard from since.

Eyewitnesses say Montgomery wasn’t drunk, but that he left the bar after bumping into a table. They say he left without incident before 2 a.m.

His cellphone sent a final ping at 2:30 a.m. by a nearby CVS Pharmacy less than a mile away.

A bar bouncer says he saw and spoke with Montgomery nearby. But police say Montgomery has yet to show up on any surveillance footage from the area.

“There’s not even one person that we are keying on at this point,” First Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Ross said.

Montgomery’s relatives are shocked by his disappearance.

“I wish that Shane would come walking in the door any minute,” his mother, Karen Montgomery, said.

“There had to be people in the neighborhood. There had to be people to see something.”