Frank Young search to move to Carrot River

The search for Frank Young is moving to a new phase.

The five-year-old has been missing for three weeks now. He was last seen outside his home on the Red Earth Cree Nation on April 18.

The searchers had been looking around where he was last seen, radiating out based on the probability of how far a five-year-old could travel, Insp. Murray Chamberlin of the Saskatchewan RCMP’s north district management team said Wednesday.

“Those areas have been thoroughly searched at this point in time and they continue to be re-searched and covered again,” Chamberlin said during a Zoom call.

Now, because the warm weather over the weekend has broken up the ice on the nearby Carrot River, the search is moving there.

“Over the next few days the Saskatchewan RCMP will be using boats and other methods to search the Carrot River for any sign of Frank,” explained Chamberlin.

“That will involve utilizing boats up and down the river, RCMP boats as well as a number of civilian boats (that) have been working on the river — and we will continue with that for a number of weeks.”

While the spring-like weather has helped when it comes to the river, it has caused problems with the ground searches.

“A number of areas are flooded,” Chamberlin said. “The muskeg (and) the areas are very, very wet and it’s causing issues.

“They were trying to use ATVs which were getting stuck. They tried Argos and even that wasn’t overly successful. Even searchers on foot … they’re wet. It’s hard going. The spring runoff and melt has definitely complicated things.”

The provincewide missing vulnerable person alert was cancelled for Young. Chamberlin couldn’t explain exactly why that decision was made, but guessed the decision was made based on whether having that information out would be of value right now.

The search for the boy has been ongoing for those three weeks and Chamberlin said every search is unique and has to be continually assessed.

“We’ll search until we’re confident that we’ve exhausted all investigative opportunities,” Chamberlin said.

The RCMP has previously said an Amber Alert can’t be issued in this case because Young’s disappearance doesn’t meet the criteria required.