Tooele County deputy sheriffs, joined by dozens of volunteers, began combing the mountains around an abandoned mine, searching for a 10-year-old Kearns boy lost since Friday evening.
Searchers had been concentrating their efforts on the scores of tunnels and shafts in the Hidden Treasure mine just above Stockton where Joshua Dennis and his Cub Scout pack been exploring."We've been through the whole mine, every square inch of it, three times and he's not there," said Tooele County Sheriff's dispatcher Kathy Cole. "The search today will focus on the area outside the mine."
Searchers, including family, friends and church volunteers, have been working around the clock both inside and outside the mine trying to locate the boy. Sunday, searchers began combing the hills in a two-mile radius around the mine.
Also Sunday, experts on mine hazards and mine rescue were brought in from Salt Lake County to search the mine, which has dozens of shafts and tunnels scattered over six different levels. People who had once worked in the mine also joined the search as volunteers.
They, like searchers before them, came up empty handed. Search dogs have also been used in the effort.
The search Monday was to be focused primarily outside the mine, which was abandoned in the late 1950s.
Dennis was reported missing about 2:30 a.m. Saturday after he became separated from his Cub Scout pack in Dry Canyon. When the Scouts and their adult leader climbed out of the shaft Friday evening, Dennis was not among the other boys.
Authorities are not certain whether Dennis became lost in the mine and later found his way out through another air vent, or whether he left the mine before his companions did and became lost in the mountains.
"We'll keep searching as long as it takes," Cole said. An air search was to begin Monday over the nearby area on the assumption the boy found his way out of the mine.
One Tooele County deputy said the mine has up to 100 air shafts where the boy could have ended up. "The (searchers) did a thorough search of every shaft," another Tooele County dispatcher said earlier. "They took oxygen down those shafts where they might require it."