PARENTS PRAY FOR MISSING SON.
Police expand search radius, look underwater
As it stretched into its fourth day and widened its scope across frozen Manitoba farmland, the search for twoyear-old Chase Martens on Friday started to look ever more like a recovery mission.
Hundreds of volunteers continued to poke through fields around the boy’s family’s farm, 110 km west of Winnipeg, as drones scanned overhead and dogs sniffed the undergrowth. But a police supervisor struck a realistic tone, noting that the boy has not been seen since sundown Tuesday. Nothing has been found, police said, neither clothing nor footprints nor any other sign of what happened to the blueeyed, brown-haired toddler.
“Our radius is expanding, and now involving more and more water. Most of the ground has been searched,” said RCMP spokesman Sgt. Bert Paquet. “You have to keep in mind the time frame we are dealing with at this point. Obviously we remain hopeful. It’s in our nature … We are aware of what we’re dealing with right now.”
Friday marked an expansion in the work of an RCMP underwater recovery team, including divers, as the search area was widened to include more ponds, creeks, sloughs and other bodies of water, many of them beginning to thaw. In all, the search area now has a radius of more than three kilometres, double what it was on the first day. Technicians could be seen kicking through the ice around drainage ditches, and dislodging large chunks of ice to search a murky creek.
“He’s just a little boy. He can’t even take care of himself yet, and that’s the scary thing because he’s so dependent on me,” his mother, Destiny Turner, told the Winnipeg Free Press on Wednesday.
Members of the nearby Cascade Hutterite colony gathered at the family’s home near Austin, Man., on Friday morning to sing hymns for the searchers, which included Winnipeg police, volunteers from 15 fire departments, and military from Canadian Forces Base Shilo.
The boy’s disappearance remains a devastating mystery. It seemed to his parents as if he was there one minute and gone the next, police said, simply vanishing from the yard of his home while his parents and two sisters, aged six and seven, were inside.
As his parents, Turner and Thomas Martens, have described it, Chase had been in the yard as his father loaded a truck. Father and son briefly went to a store, and when they came back Chase stayed outside to play while his father went inside.
His mother saw him out a window playing shortly before 6 p.m. as she prepared dinner. Fifteen minutes later, when she called him to come inside, “He was just not there anymore,” said Sgt. Paquet.
When Turner could not find Chase, she said, she walked as far as the road, calling his name, as his father searched the nearby bush. His disappearance was out of character. He had not previously wandered farther than a woodpile in the yard.
“Our son Chase has been missing since March 22. It’s unlike our son to wander off of our property, and if he did he would always have our dog with him. Chase has vanished without a trace,” Martens said Thursday in a public plea for information.
Darkly, it hinted at suspicion of a kidnapping, although police have said foul play, while not ruled out, is not suspected.
“We are looking for answers, for any information that can help bring our son home. We are overwhelmed with the support we have and how the community has come together to help up find Chase. Anyone with information please find it in your hearts to do the right thing and come forward. Any information is helpful,” Martens said through tears.
“If someone has our son, please bring him home. We won’t be angry. We will be forgiving and grateful. We are devastated to have our son taken from us.
“Me — Dad — Mom and Chase’s two big sisters pray every moment that Chase is safe.”
Police did not elaborate on the question of abduction, and defended their decision not to issue an Amber Alert, although they did ask drivers in the area to be vigilant.
“We are not dealing with a confirmed abduction at this point,” said Paquet.
One major target of the search has been Pine Creek, a sizable creek that flows within 500 metres of the farmhouse, beyond a thick wooded area but accessible by a path that Chase has walked before.
But the largest effort has been from the volunteers, walking a grid in lines across frozen fields, only deferring to professionals after nightfall. The turnout was so high police had to announce there was no need for any more helpers.
ME — DAD — MOM AND CHASE’S TWO BIG SISTERS PRAY EVERY MOMENT THAT CHASE IS SAFE.