Daming Xu, a University mathematics professor who has been missing since Sunday, has still not been found.
Xu, 63, told his friends and family Sunday that he planned to go for a day hike around Cougar Reservoir. Sunday evening, when his family had not heard from him, they reported that he was missing.
On Tuesday afternoon, a sheriff’s deputy found Xu’s white car at the Olallie trailhead. In the car was his leather jacket, the only source of warmth Xu brought with him on the hike, according to his daughter Xin Xu.
The Lane County Sheriff’s Office has deployed most of its staff to search for Xu. Since Sunday, volunteers with Search and Rescue teams from the offices of the Deschutes and Benton County Sheriffs, the Eugene Police Department and the U.S. Forest Service have also joined in a general search around the Cougar Reservoir area.
“We’re still doing what we’ve been doing with the same amount of people and the same amount of resources,” said Lt. Byron Trapp of the sheriff’s office. “We’re still searching at full power, and it continues to be a 24-hour search.”
Aiding the search are six deputies on horseback and helicopters from the sheriff’s office and the U.S. National Guard.
“There are a number of resources we can use to continue to look for him,” said Trapp. “They might deploy dog teams, if they haven’t already.”
A Tuesday press release from the sheriff’s office said two hikers called searchers and said they had seen Xu at the Olallie summit and briefly spoken to him. Xu left the summit before them, but when the hikers arrived back at the Olallie trailhead, they saw that his car was still parked there.
Searchers also found shoe prints they suspect to be Xu’s Tuesday afternoon, which they followed down a trail until they lost the prints at 3 a.m. Wednesday. They have not found any new signs or clues since.
Searchers believed they might find Xu within hours of finding his car, but the search has gone longer than expected.
“If we were searching in a flat, open meadow, we probably would have found him by now,” said Trapp. “The terrain up there is heavily wooded, with a lot of foliage and underbrush. I could walk right by the guy and not know it if he’s in some brush and isn’t responding.”
Trapp said he doesn’t know how long the search will continue, but they may well keep searching with most of their staff for several days.
“At a certain point, we have to determine whether it’s appropriate to search at this level anymore,” said Trapp, “but for now, we’re still putting all our energy into this.”
[email protected]
Crews still combing area in search of lost professor
Daily Emerald
November 7, 2007
0
More to Discover