Despite an intensive, 10-hour search Thursday, game wardens, marine patrol officers and police divers failed to find the body of a 23-year-old Scarborough man who disappeared in the Old Port on June 10 and is believed to have ended up in the water at Chandlers Wharf.
With Matthew Foster’s family members looking on, searchers used an underwater robot, divers and side-scan sonar to comb the murky waters around the wharf without success.
“We’ve had a lot of boat traffic that we’ve been dealing with today and some visibility conditions that make this a very slow search,” Assistant Police Chief Vern Malloch said at an afternoon news briefing. “We’re taking it very methodically. We do anticipate we will be back in the water again tomorrow.”
Foster was last seen at the Oasis nightclub on Wharf Street before midnight June 10. He failed to meet up with friends later and relatives have not heard from him since. On Wednesday, a police bloodhound tracked Foster’s scent to the area of Chandlers Wharf, and a cadaver dog indicated that a body was in the water in the same area.
Police have searched the area since then with no results.
Police centered their search in the water near and underneath the dock. Uniformed police officers periodically roamed between the slips, checking the surface for any signs of Foster.
The search began between Chandlers and Widgery wharves around 7 a.m., when game wardens and Portland police deployed the submersible and searched from slip to slip, letting out a couple of hundred feet of tether. A harbor master’s boat waited as the sub traced a pattern up and back in the narrow waterway.
Chandlers Wharf is located off Commercial Street in Portland, between DiMillo’s Marina and Widgery Wharf.
By 11 a.m., wardens and members of the police dive team loaded a generator and the underwater robot’s tether reel onto a marine patrol boat, allowing them to search farther down the waterway.
As the search neared its seventh hour, the boat exited the area between Chandlers and Widgery wharves, headed north, and entered the row of slips next to DiMillo’s Marina.
Two police divers entered the water and began searching under the pier at DiMillo’s at mid-afternoon. They found nothing.
Divers were out of the water after about two hours. Instead of the small, maneuverable remote-controlled robot, wardens loaded a yellow torpedo-shaped drag-behind sonar system. Although wardens can cover more area with it, the towed system does not have a camera, so any objects of interest must be examined by a diver instead of the robot, a warden said.
Foster was an employee of C.B.S. Lobster and Bait, an employee said. He had worked there for about two years.
An owner of the business, who did not identify himself, declined to be interviewed.
Police have not elaborated on what they believe Foster was doing on the wharf or why he was there. A police spokesman seemed to hold out hope for a positive outcome Wednesday, but that sentiment had vanished Thursday.
“We’re searching for a body,” said Malloch, who said officers have been in touch with the family all day. “We’re keeping them fully up to date as to what the progress is, and why we’re diving where we are.”
He added later: “It’s a very difficult and stressful time for them.”
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