Texas Rangers contacted TEXSAR on March 5, 2017, and requested the team assist in a cold case recovery search for Naomi Miller who went missing in Tom Green County in 2005. Approximately 15 team members, including K9 Orion, gathered at the Tom Green County Sheriff’s Office at 07:00 Tuesday, March 07 and proceeded to the search location. At approximately 1:30 pm, Joseph Huston, with the Gulf Coast Chapter of TEXSAR, and the K9 handler for the volunteer organization originally founded in Austin,...
Alpine, Texas – We first reported that on Tuesday, October 18, 2016, the Texas Rangers called the TEXSAR, Texas Search and Rescue, Emergency Activation Line and requested search planning assistance for the Zuzu Renee Verk missing person case in Alpine, Texas. Ms. Verk, a student at Sul Ross University in Alpine, Texas, was last heard from Wednesday, October 12. On February 7, 2017, TEXSAR was again summoned by the Texas Rangers to return to Brewster County to assist in the search...
K9 handler, Jennifer Blanton, and Travis County Fire Rescue attend to the K9’s during a search on October, 30th, 2016 in southeast Travis County, TX. Austin, TX — Skeletal remains were discovered this weekend by TEXSAR cadaver dogs. At the request of Travis County Sheriff’s Office, TEXSAR, Texas Search and Rescue, was tasked with searching an area off of Maha Loop in southeast Austin. The search area was determined after officials received a tip that indicated 33-year-old Paul Michael Longoria,...
Alpine, Texas – On Tuesday, October 18, 2016, the Texas Rangers called the TEXSAR, Texas Search and Rescue, Emergency Activation Line and requested search planning assistance for the Zuzu Renee Verk missing person case in Alpine, Texas. Ms. Verk, a student at Sul Ross University in Alpine, Texas, was last heard from Wednesday, October 12. Dozens of TEXSAR team members from the Gulf Coast, Coastal Bend, Central Texas, North Texas, and West Texas, converged in Alpine to work in coordination with...
Texas Search and Rescue (TEXSAR) is saddened by the devastating floods that have impacted our state over the last two weeks. This tragic loss of life and property has shaken our local communities. TEXSAR deployed to the Blanco River floods in the early morning hours of Sunday May 24th, directly from another deployment located almost 250 miles away. The first morning our team was able to perform 37 water rescues in Martindale, Texas. Since that time, our team has spent...
On Sunday, May 10th, 2015, at the request of the Texas Rangers and Bandera County Sheriff’s Office, several TEXSAR K9 handlers were pulled off of a local training exercise to conduct a spontaneous search for a man who was reported missing the prior month. The impromptu search was conducted after the man’s vehicle was located in the brush and swampy terrain of the Lake Medina lake bed not far from the training location. After a brief search, TEXSAR’s K9 team...
At approximately 3:30 AM on the morning of January 21, 2015, Texas Search And Rescue (TEXSAR) deployed to the Pace Bend area in Spicewood, just off of the Colorado River, at the request of the Travis County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) to assist with a search for a missing man. TEXSAR deployed 8 personnel and 2 K9s, including Ground Search and Rescue (GSAR), Flood and Swiftwater Rescue (FAST), K9 and Incident Management Team (IMT) resources, in support of this request. At approximately 08:30...
TEXSAR deployed on Sunday, January 18th at the request of Gillespie County Sheriff Buddy Mills to assist the Sheriff’s Department and the Harper Volunteer Fire Department to search for 3 missing children. By 08:00, TEXSAR had 20 GSAR Technicians, 5 K9 Teams, and IMT personnel in the field in rural Harper TX. At approximately 09:15, the three children were safely located at a neighbors house, after spending the night outside. TEXSAR would like to thank the Gillespie County Sheriff’s Office and the...
On October 18, 2014, at the request of the Wylie, Texas Police Department, TEXSAR was called to conduct a search for a missing Wylie-area nurse’s aid who was discovered missing after she did not appear at work. The search area was a three mile route she normally took between her home and work. After weeks of searching by local police and fire units, the TEXSAR Austin and Dallas Teams were called in and conducted a wide area land search. The...
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...
