DRESDEN — Maine game wardens using dogs and airboats continue to search this morning for a 12-year-old Dresden boy reported missing by his father Wednesday afternoon when the boy did not arrive home after school.
Updated: Police reported that 12-year-old Micah Thomas was found today near the Eastern River. A Brunswick warden discovered the boy and carried him to a waiting ambulance.
Micah Thomas, a student at Hall-Dale Middle School in Farmingdale, was last seen when he was dropped off by a school bus at the intersection of Eagle Lodge Lane and Route 127 in Dresden, Cpl. John MacDonald of the Maine Warden Service said today.
The boy’s father, Peter Thomas, called the sheriff ’s office around 3:40 p.m. when his son was still not home.
A local resident did report seeing a child a short distance away on East Pittston Road at approximately 4 p.m., but MacDonald said there is no indication that child was Thomas.
Throughout the night and into this morning, game wardens with their dogs, along with the Maine Marine Patrol and Lincoln County Sheriff ’s Office deputies searched the ground and in airboats along area waterways including the nearby Kennebec River.
The search began near the Thomas’ home and at the point where Thomas was dropped off by the school bus. The search has extended from there, including buildings, roadways and waterways.
MacDonald said temperatures overnight descended to about 25 degrees, so “Hypothermia is a major issue if Micah decided to wander off and go exploring somewhere. He’s probably not dressed for it, having gotten off the school bus. These temperatures, with warm days and cold nights, are very dangerous for people to go missing or get lost.”
This morning, counselors were on hand at Hall-Dale Middle School in Farmingdale to help students and teachers cope with their fears.
“It was not a pleasant phone call we received yesterday afternoon,” Virgel Hammonds, superintendent of Regional School Unit 2, which includes Hall-Dale Middle School, said today of the call from the Lincoln County Sheriff ’s Office notifying school officials that Thomas was missing.
School officials immediately began making calls and trying to determine what had happened during the day, whether Thomas had been at school and whether he had been on the bus.
“It was just a general school day,” Hammonds said. “There could be other situations that occurred — it’s middle school life, and sometimes dramatic things occur — but as far as other things, there wasn’t anything overwhelmingly different.”
Investigators spent Wednesday afternoon and evening talking to Thomas’ peers, friends and teachers, and looking at Facebook posts, Hammonds said.
Today, counselors will listen and “try to comfort everyone and reassure everyone that everything’s going to be all right and everyone’s doing everything they can.”
“It’s a highly emotional time,” Hammonds said. “We have a lot of concerned kids, as well as staff — they get really close to their kids.”
Lincoln County Sheriff Todd Brackett and other officials were out searching this morning and unavailable for comment.
MacDonald said there has been no discussion about discontinuing the search.
“This is priority one for us,” he said.
bbrogan@timesrecord.com
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