Shifting focus

Police have temporarily shifted their focus in the search for missing teen Jordan Wabasse.

Acting on a tip, Anishnawbek Police Service officers and two volunteers from the Fort William First Nation community began a snowmobile search of wooded land behind the busy THP Gas Bar on City Road.

Det.-Insp. Phil Levesque of the Thunder Bay Police Service on Friday said police will also continue to scour the banks of the Kaministiquia River after a ball cap believed to be the missing 15-year-old’s was found in the river earlier in the week.

“We do have a group of volunteers in the community who are helping us out and helping Jordan’s family to look,” he said. “Through some discussion in their group they felt that it was worth looking there. They passed information along to us and we’re following up a search today.

“Anishnawbek (Police Service) officers agreed to help us out with that and they’ll be deploying in the area.”

APS Const. John Rivet said they planned to do a grid-style search of the area in question, which he said was several square kilometers in size.

Searchers will be looking for anything out of the ordinary, he added.

“The area we’ll be searching isn’t travelled very often, (so we’ll be looking for) footprints, articles of clothing, himself, obviously. There are paths, a couple of small lakes back there. It’s heavily wooded.”

Rivet said they were acting on information from city police that indicated “he may be back there.”

Levesque said while their focus remains on the Kam River – divers have been in the water most of the week searching for Wabasse – police are acting on other tips, just in case.

“Any information that comes in is followed up and we will make every effort in the area to take a look and see what we can find,” said Levesque. “This way it’s covered off and if there are any questions of what’s remaining to be done we know we put our best foot forward and had officers look.”

Wabasse, a Webequie First Nation resident who came to Thunder Bay for school and hockey, disappeared on Feb. 7.

The search began a couple of days later.

While police originally thought he might have run away, as time marches on that theory becomes less and less likely, Levesque said.

“We feel that we’ve moved away from that right now, given the evidence from earlier in the week,” said Levesque, adding footprints in the snow by the riverbank indicates he might have been somewhere in the area.

Though the likelihood of a happy ending is growing dimmer by the day, especially as temperatures dip as they did on Friday, police say they won’t give up hope just yet and intend to carry the search into next week. They will also be bringing in aerial support starting Saturday afternoon.

“We have to keep our options open. The searchers remain positive, although as time goes by and we don’t hear from Jordan we’re expecting that the end result could be tragic,” Levesque said. “But on the other hand, like I said, we’re going to keep our options open and we’ll just keep gathering information and see what happens.”

Anyone with any information is asked to call the Thunder Bay Police crime unit at 684-1214 or Crime Stoppers at 623-TIPS.