Search for Elijah resumes
Cops poring over Abington woods for missing boy
Dozens of police officers and investigators from Massachusetts and New Hampshire will be back searching a wooded area in Abington today in an effort to find any trace of missing 5-year-old Elijah Lewis.
Plymouth District Attorney Tim Cruz said the search, which involves canines, the State Police Special Emergency Response Team, MSP detectives and the Air Wing, will continue as long as is necessary. State Police said they called off the search at 6 p.m. Friday and will start again at daylight.
“I’m confident that if that little boy is here, we’re going to find him,” Cruz told reporters Friday afternoon.
Cruz said State Police had been given information that led them to search the Chestnut Street area of Abington. He said the information was corroborated by investigators, and there may be evidence related to the disappearance of Lewis, a New Hampshire native who went missing last Thursday.
The search began Friday morning and there will continue to be heavy police presence in the area. Police also searched a smaller area in nearby Randolph, police said.
Cruz would not say how police got the tip or who gave it to them, if anyone.
A New Hampshire woman, Danielle Dauphinais, and her boyfriend, Joseph Stapf, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in connection with the disappearance of her 5-year-old son.
Dauphinais and Stapf, both of Merrimack, were arrested on Sunday in the Bronx by New York City Transit Police on warrants for witness tampering and child endangerment, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said on Monday.
The witness tampering charges allege that the defendants each asked other people to lie about Elijah and where he was living, knowing that child protection service workers were searching for him, according to the Attorney General’s Office. The endangerment charge alleges that they violated a duty of care, protection or support for Elijah, as previously reported by the Herald.
Elijah was first reported missing by the New Hampshire Division of Children, Youth and Families after social workers didn’t find the boy at the Merrimack home where the three lived.
“We hope somehow that we’re going to find Elijah, and that he’s going to be OK,” Senior Assistant Attorney General Benjamin Agati told the Herald on Wednesday. “But there is a strong possibility that he is not OK.”
The boy’s father lives in Arizona and knows that his son is missing, according to authorities.