Awful ending to family’s ordeal

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/03/2016 (3544 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NORTH NORFOLK, Man. — The body of Chase Martens, the two-year-old boy missing since Tuesday evening, was found by volunteers in a creek near his rural Manitoba home early Saturday afternoon.

“This appears to be exactly what we all thought it was — a tragedy,” RCMP Sgt. Bert Paquet said at a news conference held near the family home later that afternoon.

The creek, only half a kilometre south of the Martens house, was being examined again by search-and-rescue volunteers from Winnipeg when they found him.

There are no obvious signs of foul play in the boy’s death, Paquet said.

“We owe it to the family, the community and the province to exercise due diligence and investigate,” he said. “We’ll have a dedicated team of investigators focused on providing answers to a lot of questions that we have at this point.”

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is scheduled to conduct an autopsy today.

Paquet said the creek was one of many “high-probability” areas search co-ordinators had identified.

“The dynamics of water levels, but also current, change conditions daily, and sometimes by the hour,” he said, adding the spot where the boy was found would have been searched “several” times before Saturday afternoon.

The RCMP broke the news via Twitter at 2:47 p.m., nearly 93 hours after Destiny Turner last saw her son out a window as she was making supper Tuesday evening.

In the five days that followed, a frenzied search through bush, fields and creeks grew to a five-kilometre radius around the Martens’ home, located north of Austin, a small community between Brandon and Portage la Prairie on the Trans-Canada Highway.

The search garnered national attention, and officials had to repeatedly turn willing volunteers away.

“We cannot thank… the people of Manitoba (enough). A lot of people offered to come here, but couldn’t just because of logistics. We thank you for the good thoughts and the messages throughout the week,” Paquet said.

Weather conditions hampered efforts throughout the search for Chase. Temperatures dropped well below freezing each of the four nights he was missing. The mid-afternoon sun melted enough to turn topsoil in the fields to mud. Elsewhere, thick deadfall and icy, shaded ponds made for slow going.

On Thursday, snow and wind creating near-whiteout conditions forced searchers out of the fields.

Earlier that day, Chase’s parents spoke to media, begging anyone with information to come forward.

“We are just devastated to have our son taken from us,” Chase’s father, Tom Martens, said Thursday. The couple also has two older daughters.

On Saturday afternoon, a steady stream of pickup trucks, vans, buses and search-and-rescue equipment slowly paraded away from the Martens property.

“It is difficult going through an investigation like this,” Paquet said. “There’s not a set time where you go from a rescue to a recovery, and we always hope, but we knew the challenges after the first few nights.”

An underwater recovery team and unmanned drones specializing in mapping and imaging from Saskatchewan were brought in by RCMP — joining several volunteer fire and search-and-rescue crews, Winnipeg’s Bear Clan Patrol, personnel from CFB Shilo, local Hutterites and Winnipeg police officers, including some from the dog unit, cadets and the Winnipeg Police Service’s Air-1 helicopter. Paquet commended the Office of the Fire Commissioner’s expertise in co-ordinating the search.

On Friday alone, more than 500 people were involved in the search. Paquet estimated about 30,000 volunteer hours in total were donated to the effort, the majority by total strangers to the Martens family.

tbateman@brandonsun.com

The search has ended for Chase MARTENS. #rcmpmb can confirm that his body was found earlier today.

— RCMP Manitoba (@rcmpmb) March 26, 2016