Pasco County deputies are asking the public for help locating Paul Coban, a 25-year-old man last seen in the TLC Lane area of Dade City early Monday morning, around 5:30 a.m. Coban stands 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighs around 160 pounds, and has brown hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing a t-shirt and pants, and it remains unclear whether he left the area on foot or in a vehicle.
The Pasco Sheriff's Office shared the appeal in a Facebook post Wednesday evening, according to the Pasco Sheriff's Office. The post lays out Coban's description and last known location but does not detail the circumstances that led deputies to believe he is missing, leaving the exact nature of his disappearance an open question.
How to Report a Sighting
Anyone with information on Coban's whereabouts is asked to call the sheriff's non-emergency line at 727-847-8102, option 7, or submit a tip online through the agency's web portal. The office accepts missing-person tips around the clock through both channels, per the same Facebook appeal.
Florida's Rules for Missing Adult Cases
Florida law does not allow police to make families wait before filing a report on a missing adult. Under Florida Statute § 937.021, agencies must accept missing person reports immediately and enter them into state and federal databases within two hours of receipt.
Because Coban is 25, his case automatically qualifies for the state's Missing Endangered Persons Information Clearinghouse without requiring proof of foul play, per guidelines from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Should the case remain unresolved after 90 days, state policy requires his information to be transmitted to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, according to a lost-or-missing-persons policy document published by the Orlando Police Department. Statewide, 53,331 children and adults were reported missing in 2023 alone, according to Florida Crime Information Center data cited by the Florida Missing Children's Day Foundation.
The Terrain Search Teams Are Covering
Dade City, the Pasco County seat where Coban was last seen, had a municipal population of 7,275 across roughly 7.8 square miles as of the 2020 census, according to Wikipedia. The surrounding Dade City census area, a mix of rural and suburban land stretching 25.5 square miles, had an estimated 18,492 residents in 2024, and Pasco County overall has grown to an estimated 674,516 people, making it the 10th-most populous county in the state, per U.S. Census Bureau figures. The sheriff's office maintains specialized K9 units trained for search-and-rescue and tracking work across that terrain, though it has not said publicly whether those units have been deployed in Coban's case.
A Prior Record, Still Unexplained
Public booking records reviewed through Pasco County Arrests show a 23-year-old Pasco County resident named Paul Coban was booked in the county in May 2024. It is not clear from the sheriff's appeal whether that prior booking has any bearing on his current disappearance, and deputies have not addressed it publicly.
Part of a Busy Year for Pasco Searches
Coban's case is the latest in a string of missing-person searches Pasco deputies have handled in and around Dade City over the past year, including a recently resolved Port Richey case that ended safely earlier this week. For now, Coban's family and investigators are waiting on tips from the public to help close the gap in what happened after he was last seen on TLC Lane.
