Concern grows for missing Kelowna senior as search resumes

The search for an Okanagan senior who hasn’t been seen for three weeks resumed in the region’s rugged backcountry this weekend.

Allan Francescutti was reported missing on April 21, five days after he was last seen on April 16.

On Saturday, Central Okanagan Search and Rescue again gathered in the Dee Lake area, about an hour’s drive northeast of downtown Kelowna.

“We had to gather additional teams to give us a hand: Penticton, Kamloops, Shuswap and Vernon,” said Duane Tresnich of COSAR.

“And we’re going through and searching the area again.”

2:25 Backcountry search for senior with dementia

Crews spent countless hours looking for the 79-year-old, without success, before the search was temporarily put on hold on Monday.

Francescutti was last seen leaving his Lower Mission home on April 16, and his pickup truck was found not long after on a forest service road in the Dee Lake Road area.

So far, it’s the only piece of evidence regarding his whereabouts.

Tresnich told Global News that crews “needed to re-examine some of the areas that we looked at and some additional areas that we need to look at.”

Both police plus search and rescue are asking hunters or wildlife watchers to review their game cameras if they have any installed in the Dee Lake and Doreen Lake areas.

“There are a lot of hunters up here that might have trail cams, so we’re hoping someone might check their trail cams and we can see him coming up the road,” Tresnich said.

1:56 Search for Kelowna senior continues

At Dee Lake Resort, which does have cameras set up, there’s been no sighting of Francescutti.

“We do have cameras around the resort. We have ones on our personal cabins and the office here. We checked them; nobody wandered in,” resort manager Sean Towers told Global News.

Now missing for almost three weeks, concern for the missing senior is growing, especially with his recent dementia diagnosis.

“It’s an extreme concern,” Tresnich said. “We’re doing our best to find him.”