STOCKTON SPRINGS — The teams searching for the body of a Maine Maritime Academy student who was last seen leaving a party in Orono on Feb. 26 say they have spotted an “object of interest” in the Penobscot River that will become the focus of Monday’s search mission.

Richard Bowie, director of operations for Orono-based Down East Emergency Medicine Institute, said late Sunday night that the object was spotted in Devereaux Cove – an area south of Sandy Point Beach State Park – just before dusk Sunday.

“Very little could be done because it was getting close to dark,” Bowie said.

Dozens of people from the Maine Marine Patrol, rescue volunteers from DEEMI and more than 30 friends and relatives of the missing man – 21-year-old David Breunig of Westbrook – searched by air and ground on Saturday and Sunday along the Penobscot River in Stockton Springs.

Bowie said his team is optimistic that Breunig’s body could be in that area because a cadaver dog named Quincy has picked up his scent at several points upriver.

“This is not a chase, it’s a trail we are following,” Bowie said in a telephone interview.

Bowie credited Breunig’s friends and family for helping with the search for Breunig.

Breunig was last seen about 11:30 p.m. Feb. 26, when he left a party and was walking toward the train tracks near a railroad bridge in Orono that crosses the Stillwater River.

Bowie said searchers are determined to find Breunig in the hopes of giving his family and fellow students a sense of closure.

“He’s a Maine Maritime Academy kid and they’ve had enough tragedy,” Bowie said, referring to the five MMA graduates who perished last fall when the cargo ship they served on, the El Faro, sank in a hurricane off the Bahamas.

Earlier this month, more than 100 people attended a vigil on Portland’s Western Promenade for the Westbrook High School graduate.

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