WVSP: Another push coming in attempt to find missing elderly man in Tucker County

CANAAN VALLEY, W.Va. — There’s a hint of desperation in the search for a 76-year-old man who disappeared early Sunday morning from a home in Canaan Valley, but searchers have not given up hope.

“We really don’t know where to begin unless someone hears you and I speaking of it this morning,” Sgt. James Teter of the West Virginia State Police said Wednesday morning on “MetroNews Talkline” with Hoppy Kercheval. “Or sees some of the media outlets and says, ‘Hey wait a minute. I picked that guy up and gave him a ride to point x.'”

It might be better to say that searchers aren’t sure where to begin again after nearly 90 volunteers answered the call Tuesday, marking the third day since Raymond Eugene Epling’s disappearance. They combed the areas near Mirror Lake Drive in Canaan Valley and came away with little more than they had the day before.

“We had divers,” Teter said. “We had dogs of varying specialties. We had boats with sonar from Ohio. We had teams from Maryland. We had a very large response yesterday and really covered a lot of ground with very intricate detail.”

But the search party is taking a significant hit today, and Teter said they’ll likely be making a new round of calls to bring in volunteer searchers.

“As you know, all of these search groups are 95 percent volunteer that we’re able to resource from,” he said. “And we can’t thank them enough, but we can’t take them away from their jobs for days and days on end.”

It’s what searchers haven’t found that has sparked one of Teter’s more prominent theories.

“If anybody has given someone a ride recently that matches Mr. Epling’s description or someone knows of someone who may have done that, boy, if they could contact us and give us some kind of help on this it would be great,” he said.

Raymoned Eugene Epling, originally from Wayne but at present living in Lewisburg, is about 5’10” and 170 pounds. He was last seen wearing jeans, a long sleeve denim shirt with a WVU logo on the left pocket, and white tennis shoes at the time of his disappearance. He was not wearing his glasses when he left, which is estimated between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. Sunday morning.

“We’ve had forty degrees for the last two days, two plus days,” Teter said. “Rain, drizzle, fairly windy at times. He wasn’t dressed for the environment when he left the home on Sunday morning, let alone for the last two days.”

The initial Silver Alert has been active since Sunday. Epling suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.

If you have questions or information, please contact Tucker County Office of Emergency Management at 304-478-3927.

You can also contact your local State Police detachment.





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