SAR and RCMP dive team work from sandbar as missing boy’s father and uncle look on. Photos 250News

Prince George, B.C. – An RCMP dive team’s search for a missing 15-year-old Prince George boy has ended without success.

The four-member dive team, from the lower mainland, was brought in to search for a teenager who disappeared and failed to re-surface while swimming Friday afternoon with another 15-year-old boy at the mouth of the Hudson Bay slough.

Prince George Search and Rescue has conducted searches for the missing teen by land, water and air since Friday afternoon but no trace of the boy has been found.

SAR Search Manager Heather MacRae says the RCMP dive team was requested to search a 12-foot-deep outflow trough from the slough into the Fraser River.  She said the water level had dropped by about a foot since Friday and that would be a help in searching the trench.  One drawback, she noted, was the fact that the water in the trench is very muddy with visibility of about six inches.

SAR Search Manager Heather MacRae provides information on slough trench to dive team leader

She also said that while she was not certain how far the trench went into the slough, it is an outflow current so anything in the water would be heading toward the river and not inland.

The RCMP dive team entered the trench at approximately 8:45 am Sunday and scoured it back and forth repeatedly until about 9:30 am when it was decided that there was nothing to be discovered there.  SAR Manager MacRae said the current on the Fraser is moving much too quickly for drivers so they would not be searching the river further downstream.

Diver leaves water following unsuccessful search of slough trench

At this time the 15-year-old boy remains missing.  RCMP Constable Cory Tippe says “the Search and Rescue guys can only search down to a certain depth and the slough is deeper than Search and Rescue were able to search, so the dive guys were making sure there is or isn’t anything down there.” He says now that nothing has been found “we’ll be looking at other options in terms of where he may have gone.”

Cst. Tippe says other detachments south of Prince George have been notified of the youth’s disappearance at the slough entrance to the Fraser.   At this time the boy is missing.