Extensive Search Locates Missing Woman

By Andrew Gorosko

Following an extensive search of the Birch Hill Road area, police on the morning of Saturday, February 21, located a 50-year-old Pennsylvania woman who had been reported wandering through that area in a distraught state the previous night.

About 10:30 pm on February 20, police received a call from a Birch Hill Road area resident alerting them of a suspicious woman who had knocked on the resident’s door. The caller told police that the woman at the door was injured and was distraught. However, the woman left the premises before police arrived at the scene.

Police said they then started an extensive search of the area for the woman. That search brought together Newtown police with their tracking dog, state police with a tracking dog, and state police detectives, plus local volunteer firefighters.

In a statement, investigating town police Officer Jeffrey Silver said town police conducted a door-to-door canvass of the area in seeking the woman, and at 8 am on February 21 located her at her friend’s house on Cannon Drive. That house is situated about three-quarters of a mile from the home of the person who had alerted police of the wandering woman.

Police said that the woman had received some minor injuries from her exposure to the cold and from having walked through densely wooded areas.

Police said the woman told them that she had left her friend’s house on Cannon Drive on foot the night before and had become disoriented in the area with which she was unfamiliar.

Police explained that the woman’s friend had located the wandering woman and brought her back to her Cannon Drive house shortly after police had received the call from the Birch Hill Road area resident on the previous night. Police estimate that the woman had been missing from her friend’s house for about an hour before her friend found her.

Police said that after finding the woman on February 21, they had her transported to Danbury Hospital’s crisis intervention unit for medical evaluation.

Police said that their investigation into the circumstances of the incident showed that no criminal activity was apparent. Police did not disclose the woman’s identity.

Lieutenant George Sinko, who supervised the police response to the incident, said the search for the woman occurred within a one-mile radius where she had been reported seen. Dense woods in the area compounded the complexity of the search, he said.