Searchers comb river for lost girl

FORT FAIRFIELD – Divers from Maine Warden Service, Maine State Police and Maine Marine Patrol continued Thursday with a difficult, slow-going search for a 3-year-old girl who may have been pulled into the Aroostook River and drowned on Wednesday.

Alexandria “Allie” Wright has been missing since just after noon Wednesday, according to the warden service on Wednesday. The girl’s mother, Mandy Wright, recently moved into the Fort Fairfield apartment complex near the Aroostook River with Allie and her other child, a 1-year old.

Shortly after the toddler was reported missing, searchers found one of her pink boots on the riverbank about 500 yards downriver from the apartment.

A few hours later, a second pink boot was found ensnared in an eddy about a mile downriver from the apartment.

Police believe the girl nudged open the apartment’s rear sliding glass door and walked about 50 yards away to the riverbank.

The 3-year-old has blue eyes and fine blonde hair, and was wearing a light blue shirt, dark blue pants and her pink winter boots.

On Wednesday, between 50 and 75 people and crews in helicopters and boats combed the area for the missing child. Search crews marched along the river, its banks and looked around the apartment complex for additional clues.

The river is approximately a mile from the New Brunswick border, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police also are assisting with the search, according to Mark Latti, spokesman for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife.

The Fort Fairfield Police Department and Fire Department, Presque Isle Police Department, Aroostook County Sheriff’s Department, U.S. Border Patrol and local personnel also joined in the search Wednesday, and many of the same agencies were out searching Thursday.

Latti said the search for the toddler was rekindled at a little after 7 a.m. on Thursday.

“We’ve got six boats on the water, and one of our airplanes is overhead, as is a U.S. Border Patrol helicopter,” he said. “There are a total of 16 divers in the water.”

Individual dive teams are combing sections of the water while others look along the banks.

Conditions for the divers are harsh, Latti said.

“It’s extremely difficult,” he said on Thursday afternoon. “The river current prevents the divers from going out into deeper water. The visibility is zero. Divers are basically crawling along the bottom of the river and going by feel.”

Early Thursday evening, a Maine Warden Service boat was combing near the center of the river, while a short distance downstream, a boat with more searchers was probing along the banks of the waterway. A group of divers was farther downstream, and an airplane and helicopter buzzed incessantly overhead.

Latti said he expected divers would stop searching around 6 p.m. and that the search would continue today.

“They are going to focus tomorrow in the area where the second boot was found,” he said. “Pretty much everyone that was there today will be there tomorrow.”