Father of missing Michigan teenager Troy Coleman says he is recovering

• Troy Coleman, 17, was reported missing in May
• Nearly two months later, he entered an outdoor livestream in Miami, which caught the attention of a viewer who heard of his disappearance
• The teenager’s father, Weston Coleman, now tells PEOPLE that he is recovering in the hospital: “We are all doing much better and we thank everyone.”
  

For about six weeks, Weston Coleman was constantly on the move, searching for his 17-year-old son, Troy, who disappeared on May 17 after saying he was going shopping.

And then the boy showed up in Miami in early July after being accidentally spotted outdoors in a live video stream.

“I’m just glad he’s alive at this point and can’t believe we found him,” Coleman, 45, of Flint, Michigan, tells PEOPLE.

His son shares this feeling, says Coleman: “He is happy to be alive. We are all doing much better and we thank everyone.”

Father and son returned from Miami late last week, Coleman says.

According to his father, Troy spent a lot of time on the streets, where his skin was burned by the Florida sun. The sun’s rays were so intense that he was missing skin on his ears, nose and shoulders, and some of his normally brown hair was turning white.

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Flint police announced on July 4 that Troy had been found. Since then, he has been recovering in hospitals in Florida and now Michigan, his father says.

Troy’s absence has taken its toll, Coleman says. Although he is in “good spirits,” his mental state is unstable and he is behaving erratically, and doctors are evaluating his mental health.

In interviews with PEOPLE, Coleman explained how his son initially disappeared — while making an unusual trip out of state alone — what the search for him was like, and what the moment of their reunion was like.

He is also struggling with his own recovery and described the time spent searching for his son as a “mental and physical decline.”

“The little adrenaline rush from searching for him is over and I can’t wake up,” he says, adding: “Right now we’re both just recovering from our mission here.”

When Troy Coleman disappeared

Before his disappearance in May, Troy was sleeping at his grandfather’s house, which is next door to his father’s house. (Coleman says he is Troy’s primary guardian.) On the morning of May 17, Troy told his grandfather he was going shopping. Meanwhile, Troy’s grandfather went fishing with his friends while his father had a dentist appointment.

But Troy never returned.

“I came back two hours later and he wasn’t there. I had been keeping a close eye on him and was wondering where he had gone,” Coleman says. “My dad said, ‘Oh, he went shopping.’ He thought he was fine. Then I knew right away something was wrong because I couldn’t find him in the area. So I called the police, they came, filed a report, and he didn’t come home that night.”

As Coleman learned from surveillance footage, Troy first boarded a public bus and then took another that took him to a local mall, where he hung out all day.

Then, early on the morning of May 18, Coleman said, Troy boarded a Greyhound bus to Atlanta; when he paid the fare, his name was not entered into the system, so his family lost track of his whereabouts.

When Coleman searched Troy’s computer at home, he discovered his son’s searches for Key West, Florida. So he and a friend drove to Key West to look for Troy.

With the assistance of local police, Coleman spent seven days in the city but found nothing and returned home to Flint.

He says he searched for Troy every day after the teen’s disappearance, spending several days and hours driving. He and his other sons, Trenton and Thomas, and friends also spread the word about Troy in the Flint and Detroit areas as they searched for the missing boy.

“I kept looking for him the whole time,” Coleman says. “I know what he went through, and he went through a lot. I mean, a lot of nights, a lot of days.”

Coleman and his family initially thought Troy was dead after a while; he had never run away from home before. “I drove around so many days and nights looking for him,” he says, adding, “I looked for him so intensely that I couldn’t understand how he could have survived that without anything.”

“It was up and down like a roller coaster,” Coleman adds. “Sometimes you think he’s alive, sometimes you think he’s dead. It was horrible.”

About 50 days after the disappearance, a person who had previously heard of Troy’s disappearance came across a livestream from two Twitch users in which Troy walked into the clip. The viewer then alerted Troy’s big brother Trenton, who alerted his family.

“Then I called the Miami Beach police,” Coleman says. “And then I had Trenton send them the video and the pictures of Troy, and then they went looking for him. And then that afternoon I was woken up by the Flint Township police banging on my door saying they found him.”

As local TV station WKRC reported, neither Lacy nor Clix, the Twitch users, knew they were talking to a missing person during their livestream. In a July 3 social media post, Lacy wrote that they only found out what was going on after receiving a message from Troy’s brother.

“Now his family knows he is alive and in Miami,” Lacy wrote.

In another X-post on July 4, Lacy wrote that they were able to contact Troy’s loved ones: “The power of the internet is insane, thank you guys.”

Coleman tells PEOPLE that Troy later told him that the teenager had been robbed upon arriving by bus in Atlanta and had traveled from there to Miami without any money.

He also says Troy was arrested twice in Miami Beach, Florida, for sleeping in a park after closing time and for stealing groceries, and he refused to tell authorities his real name other than that he was John Doe.

Troy originally had about $600 but didn’t bring anything else, including clothes, his father says.

When asked why his son ran off to Florida, Coleman says his son had developed a strange idea about searching for celebrities. Before his disappearance, Troy was doing a computer search at his high school to find out how to get to Florida. The search prompted the school to contact Troy’s family.

“(My dad and I) picked him up and took him home,” Coleman recalls, “and I said, ‘Troy, why are you looking for a way to come to Florida?’ And he just said, ‘I’ve never been there.’ And then when I talked to him, I said, ‘Troy, why did you go to Florida?’ He said, ‘Dad, I was looking for famous people.'”

Since returning to Michigan, Troy spent time with his brothers and father before being transported to a local hospital where he continues to receive treatment. The family hopes he will improve by his 18th birthday in August.

Coleman says Troy’s health has changed dramatically since he was in Florida, but he describes the teenager as a great mechanic who enjoys fixing small engines, adding that his son is interested in mini bikes, go-karts, quads and snowmobiles. Before his disappearance, Troy was completing his academics to finish high school – but he was also struggling with social issues caused by his habit of often speaking about his personal religious views.

“He believes what the Bible says, not what we say. God is first in Troy,” says Coleman.

Watching the livestream with his son, Coleman said, “I was upset that people were making fun of him, but I was glad they found him, and that’s the most important thing. And I just didn’t feel like those kids understood what he was going through. I wish they would have been a little nicer to him, but at the same time, they helped find him and didn’t even know it.”

The father thanked everyone who helped find his son and spread the word, including his family members, friends, authorities in Michigan and Florida, and livestreamers. He also says he may need to take Troy to a doctor when he returns to Michigan from Florida to make sure a similar incident doesn’t happen again.

After Miami police found Troy, he was taken to a hospital, Coleman says.

Coleman flew to Miami airport on Saturday to be reunited with his son.

“We hugged and took a picture,” he says, “and then I turned around, went straight back to the terminal and took the same plane back.”