Search turns into investigation

PALMER — After searching for two long days, the city of Palmer has called off efforts to actively look for a teen who went missing over the weekend.

“Our information as to his potential whereabouts has run out,” said Palmer Emergency Services Director Jon Owen.

And since that information came from the police department’s active missing person investigation, he said, “We are focusing on the active investigation rather than the active search.”

Trenton Tunohun, 17, of Palmer, and five other people — two of them adults — were drinking by the Matanuska River Bridge on the Old Glenn Highway at about 3:40 a.m. Monday morning when police arrived to investigate a possible disturbance.

Palmer police say the four juveniles fled on foot. Two girls hid in the woods. Tunohun and another boy kept running and ended up losing sight of one another. The other boy made his way into downtown Palmer. Tunohun was last seen running toward the Matanuska River Campground.

On Tuesday, Tunohun’s friends told police they hadn’t heard from him and a massive search — involving three-dozen or more searchers — was organized. That search was called off at dusk and resumed the following afternoon. The end of the search was announced Thursday morning.

Agencies involved included Palmer’s police and fire departments, the borough’s dive team, local search group MATSAR, the Alaska Mountain Rescue Group, Alaska Search and Rescue, the Alaska State Troopers and the Salvation Army, which provided food and drinks for the searchers.

There were also community volunteers who turned out and set to work helping the search effort. Searchers employed boats, ATVs, a helicopter and search dogs.

“The reason we launched such a massive search for a missing person is there was allegedly alcohol involved and there is the nearby proximity of the Matanuska River and when you go in the direction he ran you have three boggy marshes,” Owen said.

Searchers, he added, were hampered by six-foot-high devil’s club.

“It’s very difficult terrain if you get off the trails there,” Owen said.

But with no sign of the boy in two nights searching, officials are now focusing on the investigation.

“We still are optimistic. We’re optimistic that he thought he was in trouble with the law and that he’s just gone into hiding,” Owen said.

Owen said that since Tunohun went missing, he has been in close contact with the boy’s parents. Investigators have talked to all three teens who were with him at the river that night. Police investigators have been looking for friends of Tunohun’s in the roster of the Alaska Military Youth Academy, which Tunohun completed this year.

“About 7:30 this morning his colonel and his sergeant were in the lobby to meet with me,” Owen said Thursday. “They were extremely concerned.”

Owen said Tunohun had a lot of strong connections in the community and his case has touched a lot of people.

“I’ve got staff telling me they’re staying up nights thinking about where he might be,” Owen said.

The second night of the search, he said, a dispatcher on scene got off shift and said she was heading home.

“I’m going to ride a four-wheeler. On the riverbanks,” Owen recalls the dispatcher saying. “I can’t help but look for him.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.