Clare man still missing

Casey, now 24, is known to have flown from Shannon to New York on Sept. 24, 2002, and then stayed in a hostel on West 107th street for about a week.
Since then, he has not contacted his family.
“We are assuming he is in New York,” said his father, Eugene, speaking by telephone from Ireland last Friday. “And we want him to get in touch.”
Eugene Casey said his son had been disillusioned with life in the months before he disappeared.
“He graduated with honors with a degree in law, and he’s no idiot,” he said, “But he is street innocent, he’s not streetwise.”
Damien Casey wanted to continue studying, at Harvard University, his father said, but had not been accepted in 2002.
“When he didn’t get in to Harvard, in his eyes he had failed. So he wanted to move to New York to try things out there and I told him if he worked for six months or a year and saved up money I would match the amount he saved and put him in touch with contacts in New York.
“He was simply disillusioned with Ireland and with the law and he was very slow to make friends,” he added.
Damien Casey worked for six months on building sites in and around Clare. Then, “he just left,” said his father.
“He didn’t give me a chance to double his money, he disappeared. He took off from Shannon,” he said
Casey’s parents and family are deeply worried about their son, yet because he had made it clear that he wanted to go to New York, they were uncertain what to do at first.
They contacted the police in New York and, as days and weeks passed, employed a private detective to look for Damien. The police have checked the city’s morgues. The Caseys have visited New York themselves this year. In June, said Eugene, his wife decided to visit a psychic for whom there was a three- to four-week waiting list.
“She told her that Damien was dead and that he had drowned. And then she didn’t charge any money.”
Casey said his wife went back a second time to the psychic and heard the same message, and again, there was no charge.
“It’s ominous,” said Casey, who said he is not particularly superstitious.
The Casey family continues to hope that Damien will get in touch or that someone will be able to give them some information as to his whereabouts – or his fate. On the telephone, Eugene Casey sounded resigned to hearing bad news.
Still, he said with some hope, “In a way Damien hasn’t gone missing. He just abandoned his family.”
If anyone has any information regarding Damien Casey, they can contact the family through the Irish Echo at (212) 686-1266, extension 125.