Massive search locates missing Lordstown man
By CHRISTOPHER BOBBY Tribune ChronicleLORDSTOWN - The successful search and rescue of an elderly man who apparently had wandered off drew up to 200 law enforcement and firefighting personnel who saturated village fields and wooded areas.
George Parks, 81, who lives with a grandson and his family on Highland Avenue, was found Monday after nearly 10 hours, emerging from remote land across from Commerce Park off state Route 45. It was the second time in about a year the police were called to help locate the man after he left home.
Described as a retired logger who was wearing long underwear and familiar with walking in the woods, Parks was uninjured, according to Jim Luonuansuu, a Lordstown dispatcher and spokesman for Trumbull County's Child Abduction Response Team, or CART, which coordinated the search.
Lordstown police Chief Brent Milhoan said about 25 tracking and scent dogs, local members of the Civil Air Patrol and an agency out of Florida capable of alerting hundreds of nearby neighbors by phone also got involved in the hunt before Parks was spotted by Champion fire Chief John Hickey about 1:40 a.m.
Hickey found him near the road wearing his fur-lined hat with floppy ear covers.
Parks' family reported him missing about 4 p.m. Sunday after looking for him about an hour on their four-wheelers.
Milhoan said the local Red Cross worked a command center set up at the Lordstown Administration Building. Civil Air Patrol members offered weather forecasts, but an air hunt was abandoned due to low clouds.
Firefighters used ground lights on vehicles and four-wheel-drive brush firefighting vehicles between the remote area behind the home Parks lives in and Commerce Park to the west. Some members of the search teams - groups of between 12 and 20 - were equipped with thermal imaging viewers.
Luonuansuu said CSX train operators also were alerted since a line of tracks covers the property where Parks was believed to be. In the meantime, he said, a group called A-Child-Is-Missing detonated a brief recorded phone message that was put out to 1,000 nearby neighbors.
Authorities also used ''crawlers'' from local TV stations across the bottom of the television screens.
Police had said Parks suffers from the early stages of dementia and had wandered off last year before Warren police finally located him at a home he once lived in on York Street N.W. in Warren. He had $20 on him, but no cell phone or credit cards.
''We were concerned after talking to the family that he (Parks) may have thought he was in trouble for leaving,'' Milhoan said, explaining why searchers didn't use bullhorns.
''There were 15 officers from Reminderville on overtime and police from Orange Village showed up along with firefighters from throughout Trumbull County and search dogs,'' Milhoan said.
Reminderville is about 6 miles northeast of Twinsburg.
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kathyk
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01-06-09 10:33 AM
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What a great job the volunteers done. I'm surprised at the response the family received fron CART and neighbors. What a wonderful organization. It just goes to show what you can accomplish in a community that cares!
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Suzann
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01-06-09 7:52 AM
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Thank You everyone for caring about our senior citizens. A job well done and I am so glad that there was a happy ending to this story.
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