Teams from across Oregon to join search for 7-year-old Portland boy missing since Friday

Crews from across Oregon to join search for boy, 7

PORTLAND, Ore. — Hundreds of additional search and rescue experts from across Oregon were headed to a hilly area west of downtown Portland to assist in the hunt for a 7-year-old boy who went missing from his school six days ago, and one law official said Wednesday, “The clock is ticking.”

The Multnomah County sheriff’s office on Wednesday said it was making use of a state law passed in 2007 in response to criticism of the way authorities conducted the search in 2006 for James Kim, a California man who went missing in Southern Oregon and was ultimately found dead of exposure.

“We should be bringing in hundreds of searchers this evening to assist in this,” Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton said at a Wednesday news conference.

He said a call “went out to all 35 other sheriffs” to help in the search for Kyron Horman, who disappeared Friday from his elementary school on a country road in hills west of downtown Portland.

Under the 2007 law, local authorities can call on colleagues in all Oregon counties to help with a search.

Law authorities defended their decision not to make use of the new law until now.

Multnomah County Sheriff’s Capt. Jason Gates said asking for additional help at this point in the investigation follows a “natural progression.”

Also at the news conference was Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger, who headed a task force that recommended changes that resulted in the 2007 law. He said the law foresees that local police conduct the search before crews from other counties are brought in.

“We pull out all the stops locally, initially; it starts getting prolonged, you go statewide. That’s how we do business now,” he said.

Evinger said additional crews will be arriving “in waves.”

“The clock is ticking on this search,” he said.

Law officials once again said they are not yet treating the search as a criminal case — although they are not eliminating that possibility.

Kyron’s family released a statement Wednesday asking residents around the school to check and recheck their property, outbuildings and sheds for any sign of the boy.

“Please don’t stop,” the statement ended, as read by sheriff’s Capt. Mike Shults, who is acting as a liaison for the family.

Shults said he has been with the family almost the entire time and said, “I stand here in front of you today because I carry the burden of sadness and pain they’re experiencing.”

He said the family chose not to appear in order to keep the focus on Kyron rather than shift it to themselves.

The intense search has included helicopters and dogs, and has stretched to metropolitan Portland as it entered its sixth day. It remained focused primarily on a half-mile radius around Skyline Elementary School, which is atop a ridge with a mix of forest and open areas.

The search force, composed primarily of certified volunteers in neon-green vests and T-shirts, continued to check roadsides and venture into the dense foliage that surrounds the school.

Kyron disappeared after a science fair he attended with his stepmother, who reported leaving him as he walked down a hallway toward his second-grade classroom wearing a “CSI” T-shirt and dark cargo pants.

Searchers say the last reported sighting of him was at about 9 a.m. They have refused to say who made that sighting.

The search began after Kyron did not come home on the school bus after class and his stepmother called 911.

Gates said the FBI was installing a mobile command post to expand communications and computer resources. He also said investigators were still receiving tips “constantly” and tracking all of them down, but he declined to say how many tips have come in. On Monday, he put the number of tips at 1,200.

Gates said investigators had already checked with police in St. Helens after a 36-year-old man was arrested Wednesday following a report by a boy walking home from school Tuesday that the man tried to kidnap him.

Gates declined to give any other details. St. Helens police did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press.

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