CLOSE TeNiya Jones, 19, a University of Kentucky student, disappeared recently while swimming at a Tel Aviv beach in Israel. Jones is from Fort Myers, Fla. Kinfay Moroti, news-press.com 
 
 The body of TeNiya Jones, 19, of Fort Myers, Florida, washed up on a Tel Aviv beach early July 30, 2018, after she got caught in a rip current while she and friends were swimming in in a suburb of the Israeli city two days previous. (Photo: news-press.com) 
 
 A 19-year-old student from Florida in an exchange program in the Middle East drowned while visiting Tel Aviv, according to family members. 
 
 TeNiya Jones, 19, of Fort Myers had been missing since Saturday night. 
 
 The body of the University of Kentucky sophomore, who was in a seven-week exchange program in Jordan, washed up on a Israeli beach early Monday, according to The Times of Israel. Jones had disappeared off a beach in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam after entering the water for a late-night swim with two friends and getting caught in a rip current in the Mediterranean. 
 
 The friends, who also were caught in the current, were able to get to shore and rushed to call authorities, according to a press release from the University of Kentucky. Jones and her friends — a 20-year-old woman from the District of Columbia who attends the University of Kentucky and a 21-year-old man from Illinois who attends West Virginia University in Morgantown, according to family — had decided to take a weekend trip to Israel before returning Friday to the United States. 
 
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 During the summer, the University of Kentucky, based in Lexington, Kentucky, offers an intensive Arabic-language study program in Amman, Jordan. Jones was a biology major with a minor in Islamic studies who had earned a spot in the university's premedical program. 
 
 "She was supposed to start on August 23," said Jones mother, Tosha Thomas-Mora, before she broke down in tears. 
 
 “She worked her (butt) off. She’s really mature for her age. She realized falling down and getting back up is a part of success.” Guy Thomas, Fort Myers, Florida 
 
 Jones also had hopes of becoming a walk-on to Kentucky's track team next season. 
 
 Jones had been an athlete at Fort Myers' Dunbar High School, winning 100-meter and 300-meter hurdles county and district titles before taking silver in the events at regionals. As a high school sophomore won a regional championship in the 300-meter hurdles before suffering an ACL tear. 
 
 “She worked her (butt) off,” said Jones' former track coach, Guy Thomas. “She’s really mature for her age. She realized falling down and getting back up is a part of success.” 
 
 In 2017, Jones returned to finish second in the Lee County Athletic Championships. A few weeks later, she won a regional crown in the 100 hurdles. 
 
 
 
 “She came back when everyone was at their peak and she wasn’t,” he said. “And she still showed us all.” 
 
 Jones mother, Thomas-Mora, is expected to leave Monday for Israel, arriving Tuesday. 
 
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 She is facing the death of her second child in less than a year. Her son, Samuel Jones Jr., 22, was shot and killed in a double homicide in December. 
 
 “I’m destroyed. I’m really destroyed. Why is this happening to her?" said Thomas, Jones former track coach. "She is great at everything she does. She was No. 1 in service to her community. No. 1 in the classroom." 
 
 Contributing: Adam Regan, Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press; Thomas Novelly, Louisville (Ky.) Courier Journal. Follow Melanie Payne and Dan DeLuca on Twitter: @TellMel and @NewsPressDan 
 
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 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2v0HTjF ||||| UPDATE: Monday, July 30, 11:00 A.M. - The body of 19-year-old TeNiya Elnora Jones has been found. 
 
 The Jones family has been through tragedy previously when TeNiya Jones's brother Samuel was gunned down in Lehigh Acres last December. 
 
 ORIGINAL STORY: A University of Kentucky student studying abroad this summer in the Middle East is missing following a swimming accident in Tel Aviv, Israel. 
 
 19-year-old TeNiya Elnora Jones of Fort Myers traveled with several other students to Tel Aviv, where they went swimming in the Mediterranean Sea Saturday evening. 
 
 One of the students involved in the swim reported that they got caught up in a strong current and were pulled out to sea. Two of the students were able to make it back to the shoreline; however, Jones did not. 
 
 The students called Israeli officials, who are currently conducting a primary search and rescue effort. 
 
 “Our thoughts and prayers are with TeNiya, her family and the students and others impacted,” said UK President Eli Capilouto. “We are in continual contact with Teniya’s family, officials in Israel, officials from the State Department and our Congressional delegation, to provide all the support we can for the family, students and others involved. We will do everything possible to provide whatever support is needed.” 
 
 Following the accident, the students contacted UK Police and the program’s coordinator, the Council on International Exchange, (CIEE) based in Portland, Maine. UK has previously worked with CIEE, a well-known education abroad provider. Companies such as CIEE commonly coordinate education abroad involving university students, who work with the US and other universities and arrange travel, logistics, and accommodations. 
 
 Officials from the US Embassy in Israel also have been alerted and have been involved throughout the last 24 hours, communicating with Jones’ family, CIEE and UK officials. 
 
 Both UK Education Abroad and CIEE officials contacted Jones’ family Saturday evening of the situation. UK officials also have been in touch with federal authorities in Washington and Israel regarding the accident. 
 
 UK Education Abroad officials are currently making arrangements for Jones’ mother and grandfather to travel to Tel Aviv. 
 
 Associate Provost Sue Roberts, who leads UK’s International Center, will also travel to Tel Aviv to meet with the family and officials. 
 
 CIEE and UK officials are in contact with the other students in Tel Aviv, who are safe, and are arranging for them to travel back to Amman, Jordan as soon as possible. 
 
 The program, which began in June, is scheduled to be completed this week. ||||| JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The father of a man Egypt has arrested as an Israeli spy said Monday his son was a student who volunteered for a U.S. refugee agency and described Egypt's allegations as "totally delusional." 
 
 Ilan Grapel, a U.S. immigrant to Israel, was detained on Sunday in a development that could strain Israel's relations with Egypt's new leaders. 
 
 "This whole story is totally delusional as far as I am concerned ... any connection to working with the Mossad (the Israeli spy agency) is(wrong)," Daniel Grapel, Ilan's father told Israeli Channel 2 in an interview in Hebrew from his home in New York. 
 
 Ilan Grapel once wrote that he hoped to promote Israeli policies in the Arab world, according to information he and others posted on websites. Daniel Grapel said his son was working in Egypt as part of his university studies. 
 
 "He is volunteering as part of his studies and he gets (academic) credits for summer work ... He had to stay in Egypt for three months as part of the American agency that is connected with transferring refugees from Egypt," he said. 
 
 Grapel's mother, Irene, said her son had worked for Saint Andrew's Refugee Services, a non-governmental organization, in Cairo, adding that he holds U.S. and Israeli citizenship. 
 
 On his Facebook page, Grapel made no secret of his presence in Egypt, writing that he was "preaching at al-Azhar," an Islamic university in Cairo, and that he had studied at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The reference to al-Azhar later disappeared from the page. 
 
 CONSULAR VISIT 
 
 The U.S. embassy in Cairo confirmed 27-year-old Grapel had been detained Sunday. "A consular officer visited Mr Grapel on June 13 and confirmed that he was in good health," the embassy said in a statement. 
 
 Israel's ambassador to Cairo said Monday Israel was looking into the case. 
 
 A Egyptian judiciary source said Grapel had been active in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the revolt against Hosni Mubarak, after the former president stepped down. 
 
 A statement issued by Egypt's public prosecutor said the suspect, ordered held for 15 days, had been sent to Egypt to recruit agents "trying to gather information and data and to monitor the events of the January 25 revolution." 
 
 Ex-Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former pointman in Israel's relations with Egypt, told Israel Radio he hoped the arrest was not an attempt to "put peace into total freeze." Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 which ordinary Israelis refer to as "the cold peace." 
 
 Photographs of Grapel on the Facebook page, on the website of the Israel Project -- a pro-Israel group where he trained in media relations in 2008 -- and in the online newsletter of an organization that raises funds for Israeli soldiers, matched those in a video clip of the suspect released by Egypt. 
 
 Articles about Grapel's military service in Israel appeared in the New York Daily News and Israel's Haaretz newspaper in 2006. They said he had been wounded in the Lebanon war that year while serving as an Israeli paratrooper and had immigrated to Israel in 2005 from Queens, New York, at the age of 22. 
 
 "He is a very special guy. He's an Arabist," Tsiki Ood, who said he was a friend of Grapel's, told Israel Radio, describing him as an American immigrant. "He's very intelligent ... He spoke Arabic. I hope he gets out of this trouble." 
 
 After the war, Grapel spoke in the United States at fundraisers for wounded Israeli soldiers, according to the Internet newsletter of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces organization, which also cited his injury in Lebanon. 
 
 It showed him in his paratroop uniform standing next to U.S. fundraisers and Israeli diplomats at functions in Chicago and Houston in 2006. 
 
 Two years later, Grapel took part in the Israel Project's media fellows program in Jerusalem on "educating top young leaders in how to educate the press on Israel and Iran." 
 
 In a comment that appears on the Israel Project's web page about the program, Grapel said he had been impressed by an Israeli Foreign Ministry official's briefing on conveying Israel's positions to the Arab world. 
 
 "It would be very rewarding for me if I were to be able to communicate as effectively (as the official) in such anti-Israel environments," Grapel wrote. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Ori Lewis, and Edmund Blair in Cairo; Editing by Matthew Jones)
– An American student has been missing since Saturday night, when she went for a late-night swim in the Mediterranean Sea off Tel Aviv, Israel. Two fellow students who were with 19-year-old TeNiya Elnora Jones say they managed to make it back to shore after being caught in a rip current, NBC 2 reports. Israeli authorities have launched a search and rescue operation for Jones, a University of Kentucky student who had been studying in Amman, Jordan, as part of a summer study abroad program focusing on the Arabic language, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. Jones, a sophomore, is from Fort Myers, Fla. A cousin tweeted recent photos of her on Sunday, urging anybody with information on her to get in touch. University officials are arranging for her mother and grandfather to travel to Israel. Jones, who was majoring in biology and also studying Islamic Studies, was due to enter the University of Kentucky's pre-med program next month. "I hope and pray for her that she’s somewhere fighting," Dunbar High School coach Guy Thomas, who coached her in track for years, tells the News-Press. "If she’s alive, she’s fighting. She’d fight until the end until she couldn’t fight anymore."