No Trace Of Missing Boy In Utah

The search continues for an 11-year-old Boy Scout missing since Friday in a rugged mountain area in Utah.

Some three thousand volunteers spent Fathers Day scouring the woods and poking around in an adjacent river, looking for any sign of Brennan Hawkins of Bountiful, Utah.

He was last seen near a climbing wall at the Summit County camping area in the High Uintas mountains about 50 miles northeast of Kamas, Utah.

Hawkins, who recently completed the fifth grade, was wearing just a blue sweatshirt, black shorts and white tennis shoes when he disappeared. Search officials are not concerned about exposure, as temperatures are expected to be no lower than 50 degrees.

A climbing-wall supervisor said he saw Hawkins about 5:30 p.m. struggling to remove climbing gear. At the same time, he saw Hawkins' friend walking down a dirt road toward the family's river-bottom campsite about 200 yards away. Authorities say the supervisor looked away and then looked back, but didn't see either boy.

"He must have separated from his friend," his mother Jody Hawkins said Saturday. "He doesn't have a great sense of direction."

Boy Scout leaders began a search for Hawkins about 6:30 p.m. Friday and were joined by the Summit County search and rescue squad about 9:45 p.m.

On Saturday, about 1,000 searchers combed the East Fork of the Bear River Boy Scout Reservation and the surrounding areas but had not located him. Searchers were on foot, horseback and all-terrain vehicles and helicopters scoured the rugged mountains from the air.

Saturday night, a helicopter searched using infrared.

Some churches in the Bountiful area canceled services on Sunday as their members joined other volunteers in the search.

By Sunday afternoon, there were an estimated 3,000 searchers, some on horseback or riding ATVs.

"It's Fathers Day, and I have a son," one of the searchers, Don Ferguson, told "The Salt Lake Tribune," as he walked through the area. "I just can't imagine."

The Tribune reports that of the dozens of trained search dogs that have been part of the rescue operation, so far not a single one has picked up the boy's scent.

Authorities said that they are conducting both a missing persons investigation and a criminal investigation. On CBS News' The Early Show, Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds said that is normal for these types of situations.

"Any time a child goes missing, we obviously treat it as a missing person right out of the chute," Edmunds told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen. "But I've also got my detectives running a parallel possible kidnapping investigation, and they're gathering information about all the people that were up here and there has been quite a number of people up here over this weekend."

"There's individuals that came to the scout camp for training. There's people that have been camping in the general vicinity. And I got my detectives out there right now trying to ascertain just exactly who was up here in the woods and make sure we didn't have a predator or something of that nature," Edmunds said.

Searchers are worried that the 11-year-old might have tried to cross the river on his own.

Dan Rascone of CBS Station KUTV in Salt Lake City reports that authorities are most concerned about the high rivers, because there has been a lot of snow and rainfall and that means they running fast and they are very deep.

"The biggest risk is the river," said Summit County Sheriff's chief deputy and search and rescue coordinator Dave Booth. "It's over a man's head in some places, and the current is swift." The Bear River's East Fork runs near the Scout camp's climbing wall, though not in the direction of the campsite where Hawkins was staying.

In addition to the search and rescue operation, as part of its standard procedure Summit County officials are conducting a parallel criminal investigation - although there is no solid evidence to indicate criminal activity.

Utah Senate President John Valentine of Utah County Search and Rescue was among those combing the river on Sunday.

"We are a swiftwater team. So we went into the water with two canines, one on each side of the bank," he told KSL-TV. "You actually get into the river with long poles and you look for places where things can get caught."

"Because it's a small child, sometimes they are drawn to water, so that is a possibility," Edmunds said.

Edmunds added that he is hopeful that Hawkins will be found because the weather has been cooperative.

"If he is out there in the woods, he could have survived with the temperatures that weren't that cold," he said.

The mountainous area being searched is just 15 miles from where 12-year-old Garrett Bardsley vanished last summer while camping near Crystal Lake. Bardsley was never found, despite a wide, weeklong search.

On Saturday, Bardsley's father, Kevin Bardsley, joined the search for Hawkins.

Booth said the area of the current search is "less severe" than the place where Garrett was lost - not so high, steep and cold.

Hawkins is a Boy Scout, but was not camping with his troop Friday, according to his mother, Jody Hawkins. He was a guest of his climbing partner, whose father is a volunteer leader of an annual large trip for Varsity Scouts, ages 16 and 17.