Exclusive: Mother fears missing son found dead in Roosevelt, Long Island

ROOSEVELT, Long Island (WABC) -- Eyewitness News spoke exclusively with a Long Island mother who fears her son may be the body that police have found in a wooded area in Roosevelt Friday.

Lilian Oliva-Santos said her son Kerin Pineda went missing in May 2016. She said the Freeport High School student was talking with a girl on Facebook who told him to meet her in a wooded area.

Oliva-Santos said that's the last time she heard from her son. She said she knows in her heart something bad happened him. She believes he was tricked into going into the woods.

"It's not easy for a mother to lose a child," Oliva-Santos cried telling Eyewitness News reporter Kristin Thorne.

Oliva-Santos recently joined forces with another mother whose 15-year-old son went missing. Freeport High School student Angel Soler disappeared July 21. Oliva-Santos said she and Soler's mother, on several occasions, searched the woods near their Freeport homes for their missing boys but never found them.

Nassau Police, the FBI, New York State Police and Homeland Security are searching a wooded area in Roosevelt just next to the Southern State Parkway after investigators received a detailed tip about bodies buried there as part of possible gang-related murders.

Police have not identified the body found Friday, only saying it is a male. They say they will continue to search for other human remains.