Daylong search yields no sign of missing girl

FORT FAIRFIELD – Despite a sixth day of extensive searching Monday, crews uncovered no new information about missing 3-year-old Alexandria Lynn Winship-Wright, who organizers fear may have fallen into the quick-moving Aroostook River on April 25 and drowned.

Since her disappearance, the only trace of her that has been found are her pink boots.

Mark Latti, spokesman for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said that searchers began looking for the girl again at about 8 a.m. Monday.

“The [Maine] Warden Service has had at least one boat on the water at all times, and sometimes two,” he said. “We’ve also got 10 ground searchers in the area, and the search has gone on throughout the day.”

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has posted information about the toddler’s case on its Web site, www.missingkids.com, with a request for those with information to call the center or the Fort Fairfield Police Department.

Fort Fairfield police Officer Kevin Reed said it is routine for the department to submit information about missing children to the center.

“We just wanted to get information about the case out there as soon as possible,” he said early Monday evening.

Monday’s cloudy, drizzly weather hampered the search significantly, according to Latti.

Poor visibility prevented an aircraft from doing an aerial search of the area. Although the water in the Aroostook River has gone down approximately 5 feet since the girl first went missing, it is still quite cloudy, he said.

An expansive search for the girl began after Mandy Wright, the girl’s mother, reported her missing at around noon Wednesday, April 25.

Wright said she left her daughter alone for just a minute to go to the bathroom and when she returned, the sliding glass door at the back of her apartment was open and the child was gone.

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

Hunter, the Presque Isle Police Department’s tracking bloodhound, captured Allie’s scent trail heading upstream along the ATV trail toward the Route 1A bridge. Almost beneath the structure, where they found her boot print on the trail, the bloodhound headed into the water twice. At 1 p.m., one of the child’s pink boots was found on the riverbank, about 200 yards from where police believe she entered the water. Four hours later, police found her second boot caught in an eddy about a mile downriver from the apartment.

In the hours after the child went missing, between 50 and 75 searchers were conducting air, water and ground searches. They included members of the Presque Isle Police Department, the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Department, the U.S. Border Patrol, the Fort Fairfield Police Department, North Star Search and Rescue and local personnel.

The Route 1A bridge is approximately three miles upriver from the New Brunswick border, so the Royal Canadian Mounted Police also have assisted with the search.

Nearly two dozen divers from the Warden Service, Maine State Police and the Maine Marine Patrol also have combed the water for the child.

Poor conditions – including strong currents, cold temperatures and zero visibility in the river – forced divers to abandon the underwater search Friday night.

In the wake of the toddler’s disappearance, the Department of Health and Human Services has removed 21-year-old Mandy Wright’s 1-year-old daughter; and a 5-year-old daughter was handed over to her biological father after he was granted custody of her last Wednesday, the day Allie went missing. Police say there are no charges pending in the case.

Latti said Monday that the search for the child will continue until “the foreseeable future.”

“We may change our methods, but we will continue searching with boats, ground crews and an airplane when possible,” Latti said. “After each day, we will reassess the situation for the next day.”

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

The Associated Press contributed to this story.