Police lead SAR operation to locate missing hunter in South Canterbury

Canterbury Police SAR and volunteer SAR teams from Twizel, Lake Tekapo, Fairlie and Timaru have been joined by local farmers and friends to spend a second day searching the upper reaches of the Tengawai River in South Canterbury Today (21 April 2015).

63 year old Dunedin man, Murray Edge, has been missing since 8.30pm on Sunday (19 April 2015). Police understand he became separated from the friend he was hunting with during the evening and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. He was wearing camouflage clothing.

Canterbury Rural Area Commander, Inspector Dave Gaskin, said “the SAR search started shortly after 7.30am on Monday (20 April 2015) morning after Murray’s friend was able to call for help. He had spent the previous night searching for his friend before raising the alarm at a nearby farmhouse where he could call Police. There is no mobile phone coverage in the area and neither hunter had a PLB (personal locator beacon) with them. We had teams searching most of the day yesterday and they have gone out again today.”

“A team flew over the area yesterday to do an aerial search using a helicopter. Unfortunately the weather, terrain and bush cover hampered the aerial search. While the search area is quite small it is covered in low scrub and vegetation with lots of steep gorge type creeks. Combine this terrain with the camouflage clothing that Murray was wearing and you can appreciate how challenging and time consuming it will be to search the area properly. We currently have around 60 people in teams searching the area” explained Inspector Gaskin.

The poor weather conditions in the area are not set to improve over the coming days. Inspector Gaskin says the low cloud and rain is also slowing down the search for Murray.

The search area is difficult to access through private land and farm tracks. A ‘base’ has been set up near a public road but due to the terrain this is out of sight of the search area.

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