By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
Boats and divers from the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office and four other departments combed the Siletz River on Monday looking for a 2½-year-old boy missing since Saturday.
Boats with 13 divers from Lincoln, Clackamas, Multnomah, Lane and Tillamook counties combed 1½ miles of the river for Dane Paulsen as professional and community-led volunteers searched land surrounding his parents’ property near Siletz without finding a trace of him.
Lincoln County Sheriff Adam Shanks told YachatsNews that there continues to be no criminal link to Dane’s disappearance and that a full search effort would continue Tuesday.
“We’re going to keep going until we exhaust everything we can possibly do,” Shanks said.
Paulsen’s home is within 100 feet of the river. A sheriff’s office news release Sunday night called Dane “friendly and fearless, and is comfortable around strangers and water, but cannot swim.”
Dane’s parents, who the sheriff’s office has not yet named publicly, are fully cooperating with investigators and searchers and giving full access to their home and property.
Shanks said the parents are obviously very emotional and that the sheriff’s office and the FBI’s victims’ assistance unit is “trying to provide as much support and privacy as we can.” The Paulsens also have an 8-year-old daughter.
The parents told deputies that Dane was last seen at 4:25 p.m. Saturday playing in the front yard of their house bordered by the river and Highway 229.
But with hundreds of seachers on foot and horseback, dog teams and drones with thermal imaging unable to find the boy on land, more attention is being paid to the river.
“We’re not finding him on dry land through the hundreds of acres we searched,” Shank explained. “But we also still don’t have any eyewitnesses of where he went.”
Searchers in boats are covering riverbanks and divers are taking advantage of 4-5 feet of visibility to check under water, Shanks said, and were able to cover 1½ miles Monday. Boats and divers from Lincoln and Clackamas counties were in the water Sunday.
While the odds of finding a 2½-year-old alive after three days in the elements are dwindling, Shanks said the searchers are “staying focused and over-doing their due diligence.”
“We’re trying to do everything we can,” he said.
Shanks again complimented the hundreds of community members and volunteers from Siletz and from all over Oregon and Washington who have descended on the Elks Toketee Illahee campground on the north side of the river opposite the Paulsen property.
In a news release Monday afternoon, the sheriff’s office said community members had covered 230 acres of the 682 total acres searched “for which we are incredibly grateful.”
Dane – who has brown hair and green eyes — was wearing a gray, fuzzy hooded fleece coat with teddy bear ears, black pants and blue and white shoes when he disappeared.
One major mysterious element of the search was eliminated Sunday, the sheriff’s office said Sunday night. A station wagon and man, both unfamiliar to the Paulson family, were seen near Ojalla Bridge near the family’s property about 30 minutes before Dane’s disappearance, the sheriff’s office said. After alerts on Facebook by the family and police notification, a person who saw the notices and the car called police Sunday afternoon. Sheriff’s deputies found the car and man and determined he was not a person of interest, said Shanks.
Shanks said there was never a direct link of the vehicle to the boy’s disappearance, no suspect and no license plate – so therefore it did not meet the criteria to use the statewide Amber Alert system.
The sheriff’s office asked anyone who might have information on Dane’s disappearance call its tip line at 541-265-0669 or non-emergency dispatch at 541-265-0777.
