An RCMP Underwater Recovery Team has so far been unsuccessful in finding a two-year-old boy who went missing near the Canfor Bridge five days ago. Corporal Shawn Graham says after two days in the Wapiti River, their dive operations will end Wednesday afternoon.
“They’ve been searching specific areas identified through their investigation of it and through their search techniques. They’re going to continue on and be done at the end of [Wednesday].”
The URT has been on the scene since Tuesday, which is when all ground searches were completely scaled back. As of Thursday, the only RCMP resource remaining will be a boat doing patrols on water, joined by some Technical Search and Rescue members and a private air operator for the remainder of the week.
Once the dive team has left, the scene will no longer be secured by police. At that point, it will again be open to the public should they wish to go to the area.
“I’m not encouraging people to do that, but if they feel they want to do that it’s up to them if they want to go down,” Graham says. “If you’re not familiar with boat operations or the river and things like that it can be dangerous.”
The toddler was with his family when he went missing the evening of July 6th. Since then, extensive searches have been done by ground, water and air. Graham says the RCMP is grateful for the exhaustive work put in.
“We just want to thank all the agencies that have been involved, efforts that have been put in. People have worked tirelessly for this search effort and the outpouring of support from the community has been tremendous. Certainly, our thoughts will remain with the boy’s family.”