Searches yield no sign of girl

FORT FAIRFIELD – Every day since April 25, someone has been out on the Aroostook River looking for Alexandria Winship-Wright, the missing 3-year-old girl from Fort Fairfield.

Despite an exhaustive effort, however, searchers have been unsuccessful in their quest to find the blond, blue-eyed youngster – but there are no plans to stop looking for her in the immediate future, Mark Latti, spokesman for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said Wednesday afternoon.

Latti said the Maine Warden Service has put boats on the water for several hours each morning to search for the missing child, who searchers believe may have been drawn into the quick-moving Aroostook River on April 25 and drowned.

“We’ve also had wardens driving along the sides of the river and planes flying overhead, and the Fort Fairfield Police Department has been searching hard as well,” he said. “But we haven’t found anything.”

An expansive hunt for the girl began after Mandy Wright, the girl’s mother, reported her missing at about noon 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 walked about 50 yards away to the riverbank.

Searchers found one of the child’s pink boots on the riverbank, about 200 yards from where police believe she entered the water. Later, police found her second boot snared in an eddy about a mile down the river from the apartment.

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

This past weekend, Latti said, two boats staffed with wardens were on the water. Nets also have been used to drag the bottom of the river, and aerial searches have been ongoing when the weather permits, he added.

“We are still on the water, we’re still combing the ground, and we’re still flying over the area whenever we can,” Latti said Wednesday. “There are no plans to discontinue that effort in the immediate future.”