Searchers continue looking for boy

TOFINO, B.C. – Police and volunteer searchers fanned out across this Vancouver Island community and nearby woods and beaches again Saturday, searching for a missing 8-year-old boy from Bellingham.

William Pilkenton went missing Friday morning. Searchers spent a second day Saturday scouring the town by land, sea and air.

“No signs, no witnesses, no footprints, no concrete evidence of him being in town,” said Garth Cameron, of Westcoast Inland Search and Rescue.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police used dog teams on land and dive teams in the waters off Tofino looking for the boy, who went missing while walking on the rocky shore of Duffin Cove early Friday. His parents, David and Camilla Pilkenton, were staying at a local bed-and-breakfast and reporters who approached the house were asked to leave by police.

RCMP says the area where the boy was last seen walking was rocky, slippery and wet with rain, and the ocean breaks onto the rocks. Some people reported seeing the boy in town Friday after he disappeared around 10 a.m., but searchers hadn’t ruled out the possibility he might have been swept into the water.

The search was to be called off when darkness fell but would resume today, Cameron said. Searchers scoured the town three times Saturday, he said.

An RCMP helicopter with infrared capacity to detect body heat also flew over the area, while dive teams looked in the water. Cameron said search, which required about 50 volunteers, was the biggest search in the area in a long time.

The boy was last seen wearing a red jacket, multicolored fleece, blue jeans and black rubber boots.