GAMBIER — A group of five men — paramedics, EMTs and firefighters — drove into Mount Vernon on Wednesday morning to help with the search for missing Apple Valley residents Tina Herrmann, Kody Maynard and Stephanie Sprang.
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All five men, according to Jon Reed, of Caledonia, have training in man tracking and search and rescue. Reed said he is no authority on search and rescue but he felt his skills and training, and that of the men in his group, would be beneficial to the search efforts.
Because no organized search party was coordinated through law enforcement on Wednesday, the five men decided they should look near water and areas where someone could “easily place or dispose of a body.”
“We did not come here looking to find bodies,” Reed said. “We just want to help look for clues.”
The group, with members from Bucyrus, Delaware and Marion, met up with two local searchers along the Kokosing Gap Trail.
“We searched around the bike path and the Brown Family Environmental Center,” Reed said. “We also went out to the quarry.”
The group of seven combed over the area around Small’s Sand and Gravel on Killduff Road east of Gambier.
“We found some trash and a couple of old shoes — nothing fresh,” Reed said of the emphasis on the areas surrounding the quarry as they searched in grids.
“You look for things like drag marks, tire tracks or freshly moved dirt in wild settings,” said Reed of some of the information he learned in his training.
“We are just trying to help other people,” Reed said. “This is what we do. We wanted to try to help people get some closure. ... If I was in the same situation, I’d want a million people out searching for my family.”