Early in the morning on September 18 Senior Deputy Jessica Hollis of the Travis County Sheriff’s Office went missing in a flooded creek near Mansfield Dam. Over the next two days, members from over a dozen different agencies searched by ground, water, and air to find this missing deputy until the fallen deputy was located and recovered from Lake Austin. TEXSAR was honored to be one of the agencies called to participate in this search that leveraged every capability and every...
On Wednesday, August 27th, 2014, at the request of the Texas Rangers and in concert with Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office, several TEXSAR members deployed to assist the in the search for a woman missing since August 5th. While preparing to deploy ground search and K9 assets, TEXSAR’s air search assets began the search for the missing woman. After an approximate one hour search via TEXSAR helicopter, a person’s remains were located in dense brush just north of Bastrop. With no other...
On three consecutive weekends TEXSAR was called to aid in searches for missing swimmers along the San Marcos River. The first search started with a call on the evening of August 9 for a 20-year-old male tuber had been missing since that afternoon near Martindale, TX. Units from Chisholm Trail Fire Rescue‘s swift water rescue team, San Marcos SMART Divers, TEXSAR, Maxwell VFD, Martindale Vol. Fire Department, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Caldwell County Sheriffs...
June’s TEXSAR Member of the Month is no stranger to the world of Search & Rescue. TEXSAR K-9 Team Member “Recon” was born in November of 2005, and began training for cadaver recovery at the tender age of eight weeks! A fast learner, Recon was certified by the time she was one year old. Two months later Recon, and her handler Melissa Ellis, deployed to Iraq for nine months to help the United States Army search for soldiers listed as...
On the evening of Sunday, July 13, 2014, several TEXSAR members were deployed to assist the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, Travis County Search and Rescue, and Alamo Area Search and Rescue in the search for Antonio Perea. Mr. Perea left his residence in southeast Travis County early in the morning that Sunday. Due to high temperatures and his known medical issues multiple search assets were enlisted to help in the effort. These assets included search personnel, search management personnel, K9’s, and...
The TEXSAR team was once again called out to Big Bend country in mid-June. This time we were asked to support an on-going investigation by the Brewster County Sheriff’s office and the Social Security Administration. This deployment demonstrated TEXSAR’s agility by deploying personnel from numerous locations across Texas. Personnel in the search came from Midland, San Antonio, Austin, and Hearn meeting up in the west Texas town of Terlingua. The advance team arrived mid-afternoon which allowed them to link...
