Authorities said late Friday that they would be scaling down the search for a missing 67-year-old College Station man after about 29 hours of groundwork that included high-tech tracking technology, dozens of law officers and some citzen volunteers.
Members of law enforcement use a bloodhound to search the the area surrounding the Nantucket neighborhood for a missing elderly man Friday. Alec Pearson, Jr. was last seen in the area Thursday around 9 a.m. Members of law enforcement use a bloodhound to search the the area surrounding the Nantucket neighborhood for a missing elderly man Friday. Alec Pearson, Jr. was last seen in the area Thursday around 9 a.m.
http://liarcatchers.com/missing_persons_investigations.html
Mike Wilson, the chief deputy with the Brazos County Sheriff’s Department, estimated that at one point there were about 100 people involved in the search for Alec Pearson Jr.
Pearson’s family reported to the sheriff’s department at about 4:30 p.m. on Thursday that he had disappeared from his home on Scrimshaw Lane in the Nantucket subdivision about eight hours earlier.
Brazos County Sheriff Chris Kirk said his department began looking for Pearson as soon as he was reported missing. Kirk said the man suffers from Alzheimer’s.
A search command center was established just off the Texas 6 feeder road on William D. Fitch Parkway, near where several people had reportedly seen Pearson several hours after he had disappeared.
Pearson has reportedly disappeared three previous times — in March 2011 and twice in May 2012.
Wilson said that if a missing person is reported quickly, officers can set up a perimeter around the area where he is most likely to be found. Due to the eight-hour lapse, officers had to widen their search.
The sheriff’s department was assisted by Bryan and College Station fire departments and Search Dog Network, which helped them create a search strategy, Kirk said.
Once the search teams lost light, White said their ability to effectively seek Pearson diminished. At that point, a helicopter out of Houston used FLIR, technology that detects a human’s heat signature, covering about a 5-mile radius to look for Pearson in areas that were wooded and difficult for search parties to reach.
On Friday, Kirk said that the search party grew to include search and rescue team from East Texas, troopers from the Department of Public Safety, dog search teams from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Travis and Grimes counties, the Red Cross and citizens who wanted to offer their services.
The Texas A&M Veterinary school even sent out a mobile vet clinic to tend to the horses and dogs involved in the search.
“It was just an absolutely incredible response that we got; there was a lot of compassion,” Kirk said.
Searchers, including dogs, all wore GPS tracking units from the Bryan Fire Department’s mobile command center. Kirk said that when each person returned to the command center, they could download the information from the tracker onto a computer to see what ground had been covered.
“We ended up with about 45 tracks of property that we searched,” Kirk said.
Temperatures on Friday were predicted to reach 100 degrees, but fell several degrees short, rising to about 95.
“Our concern is for his well being and health. He’s an elderly man and with this heat, we’re very concerned about him,” Wilson said.
Throughout the night and continuing Saturday, Kirk said that the canvass would be reduced to dog searches and officer vehicle patrol of nearby roads.
“We remain hopeful,” Kirk said. “We’re certainly doing all that we can to find him.”
