Incident 31/2012

At 17:44 this evening, the team was paged by a member of GMP Tactical Aid Unit regarding the team’s assistance in the search for a missing 73 year old man in the Flixton area of Urmston.

The man had been missing since the 19th April with Police and media appeals for information relating to his whereabouts appearing in the local press and local area.

With the enquiry continuing since the man’s dissapearance, this evening GMP required a search of specific areas around the missing man’s home centred upon the area of Acre Gate and William Wroe golf courses and the Woodlands area of Flixton.

We were requested to undertake searches of these areas with a full team callout occurring at 18:11 and members assembling at the search RVP adjacent to Flixton railway station at 19:30. Team members were split into three search parties, each allocated to these search areas with the searching commencing at 19:50 with all areas complete by 21:30.

We were joined in this search by a SARDA air scenting dog team from our colleagues at Rossendale & Pendle MRT.

The MRT aspect of this search did not result in any finds relating to the dissapearance of this man, and with Police enquiries continuing our last personell left the RVP at 22:15.

The following resources were deployed on this search operation:

• Bolton MRT
  • 26 team members (including members of our Water Search and Rescue team albeit not deployed in that capacity)
  • Four team Land Rover mountain rescue ambulance vehicles
  • One team minibus
  • Our 3.5m semi-rigid inflatible SAR boat (not ultimately deployed)
• SARDA Wales/Bolton MRT mountain rescue trailing dog team, handler Steve Nelson and Search Dog Boris (not deployed in this capacity, with Steve taking part alongside search party members)
• SARDA England/Rossendale & Pendle MRT mountain rescue air scenting dog team, handler Steve Garafalo and Search Dog Finn, with navigator (RPMRT Deputy Team Leader Graham Dalley)
• GMP Tactical Aid Unit officer acting as search coordinator and GMP liaison officer