EDMONTON – The RCMP Special Tactical Operations (STO) team is searching the town of Mundare this weekend, in hopes of locating a 44-year-old woman who was last seen in late November.
Deanna MacNeil was last seen by friends the evening of Thursday, Nov. 28, 2013 in Mundare, which is located about 85 kilometres east of Edmonton.
After reviewing surveillance video from several businesses in the town, RCMP say MacNeil was seen on video at the Mundare Liquor Store that same Thursday morning.
A friend of MacNeil’s says he saw her on that same Thursday as she was heading to the liquor store to buy beer.
“I got my beer, I walked out and I was just coming around the corner as she came out and she was heading down the opposite way,” Ron Kimberley said Saturday. “And she said ‘will I see you tomorrow?’ And I said ‘yeah, I imagine I’ll drop down and have a beer with you.’ And that was the last I seen of her.”
Monique Bray, who has lived in Mundare for two years and also knows MacNeil, says her disappearance is very strange.
“She was always here, she’d always phone me,” Bray said. “We haven’t seen nothing of her, nothing. She kind of just vanished.
“Everything is still here, her purse, her wallet, everything,” Bray added.
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STO officers say they will be searching “everywhere and anything” in hopes of finding MacNeil or anything linked to her.
“It could be her purse, it could be clothing that she was wearing, identification, anything like that,” said Cst. Grant Kneller.
“We basically cordoned off the town and we’re systematically going through each little section to make sure that nothing is missed,” he explained “We’re starting in the areas of highest probability of where she might be, based on what we’ve learned from talking with family and friends.”
Thirteen officers, broken up into two teams, will be searching the town both Saturday and Sunday. Kneller says this type of search is particularly challenging in the winter, especially with the large amount of snow the town’s received.
“We have searching sticks, shovels, rakes, and members are basically systematically going through their section basically digging down to the bottom of the snow, poking through the snow, whatever they need to do to make sure there’s nothing in that area.”
MacNeil is described as a Caucasian woman, 5′ 5″ tall, weighs about 125 pounds, with hazel eyes and long brown hair. She was last seen wearing an orange winter jacket, jeans and a black t-shirt.
RCMP are taking her disappearance very seriously and say officers have not yet received any tips which have helped in locating MacNeil.
Anyone with any information is asked to contact the Vegreville RCMP Detachment at 780-632-2223. Anonymous information can be submitted to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or online.
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