Bangor agency joins search for P.I. woman

PRESQUE ISLE – A Bangor-based agency has joined the search for a missing Presque Isle woman, using aircraft-mounted digital imaging photography and a land-based search team.

Down East Emergency Medicine Institute conducted digital photography overflights of the Aroostook River from Presque Isle to the Canadian border Thursday. On Friday, an on-the-ground two-person team was checking out objects of interest detected by the 350 images taken by the aircraft.

Tela Hart, 42, of Presque Isle has been missing for two months. Few clues have been found of the woman who went missing during the early morning hours of Oct. 9 after she left a party. She was supposedly going home, but never got there.

Hart was dressed in blue jeans, a white T-shirt and sneakers. Hart is described as being 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing about 180 pounds. She has blond hair and hazel eyes.

No clues have been found. Police believe she may have been intoxicated when she left the party.

She has not contacted anyone since she left the party on Lenfest Street between 3 and 4 a.m. that Sunday. There have been no sightings and no activity on her credit cards.

Detective Wayne Selfridge of the Presque Isle Police Department has worked on the case nearly full time since Hart went missing.

“We are really pleased that the weather is holding out and we can continue the search,” Selfridge said Friday. “We meet with the family on nearly a daily basis.

“This agency has sensitive cameras and software to enhance images, giving an opportunity to check areas further,” Selfridge said. “They were also able to enter Canada with special permits.

“The search is ongoing,” he said.

Richard Bowie, director of DEEMI, said a single-engine aircraft flew more than 3.5 hours Thursday making images from Presque Isle to the Canadian border. The static picture images were reviewed Thursday.

“We are looking for objects of interest, examining clues, clearing sites on the ground today,” Bowie said Friday. “We are working with the family and the Presque Isle Police Department.

“This is a good tool giving us clues to examine,” Bowie continued. “It easily helps clear areas such as bogs without having to send people into the wet areas.”

The service has been doing image searching for about one year. Bowie said it gives searchers a “better set of clues.”

Bowie’s group was asked to get involved by Hart’s family. The flights started after working with the PIPD and Selfridge.

Copies of the images have also been given to the Presque Isle Police Department.

Game wardens from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, an officer of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Maine State Police, aircraft, a helicopter from the U.S. Border Patrol, and underwater cameras. Civilians also have assisted in hundreds of hours of searching, as well as members of the North Star Search and Rescue at Presque Isle.

Selfridge said American and Canadian authorities manning dams downstream from Presque Isle on the Aroostook River also have been checking their facilities on a daily basis, but have found no clues.

Presque Isle police Chief Naldo Gagnon, according to Selfridge, even built an underwater periscope with lights to increase visibility for walkers in the stream and river and for people searching by boat.

During the six weeks of the search, Selfridge has worked on the missing woman’s case full time for four weeks and more than half time the rest.

Selfridge said members of Hart’s family are doing nearly daily runs by boat on the river and stream.

The Presque Isle Police Department’s bloodhound, Hunter, tracked Hart to the waterway some 30 hours after she was missing.

While there is no indication of what may have happened to the woman, the search of the Presque Isle Stream and the Aroostook River have been the focal point of the search. The stream dumps into the river two miles below a dam near where the last trace of Hart was found.

Police are asking that anyone who has seen Hart, or knows where she is, contact the Presque Isle Police Department at 764-4476.