Searchers, who spent the past week trying to locate the body of a nine-year-old Haldimand County boy swept into Lake Erie last month, have so far turned up no trace of Alex Ottley.
“It’s discouraging,” William Bolton, of the Advanced Tactical Training Search and Rescue Division of Kitchener, who helped co-ordinate the effort, said on the weekend.
“We’ve been looking over the last week, along with many members of the community, and everyone involved wants to be able to say ‘There he is!’ and end this for his family.”
Bolton said that, among those helping with the search, were teams from Manitoba and the U.S. Most of the those from out of the province had to return home on the weekend.
“It’s the least we can do, but, at some point, you have to scale things back and let nature show us where he is.”
Alex, a Grade 3 student at Jarvis Public School, was playing on the ice off Lakeside Drive at Peacock Point with an eight-year-old friend when a wave pulled them into the water on Feb. 15.
Ottley’s 10-year-old sister ran to the road and hailed passing motorists. Rescuers managed to pull the eight-year-old to safety but Ottley slipped beneath the ice and never resurfaced.
An intensive air, land and water search ensued but OPP called off the effort Feb. 25.
Bolton said his team used marine technology that is a specialized form of sonar to search deeper waters. “Basically, it’s like a very expensive fish-finder sonar.”
He said his team will return once a search boat is out of storage and equipped to continue looking.
Police also are continuing with periodic aerial and shoreline searches.
“We’re not abandoning the family,” Bolton said. “We always keep in touch with them and update the police. We’re just closing things up for now.”
SGamble@postmedia.com
via ‘Discouraging’ results in search for Alex’s body | Brantford Expositor
