Dylan Ehler’s parents continue to search despite rumours, empty leads and false ransom notes

Nearly six months since his three-year-old son, disappeared Jason Ehler is tired and frustrated.

“It’s honestly like day one every day,” Jason told Global News in a phone call this week. “This is a frickin’ nightmare.”

Dylan Ehler was last seen at his grandmother’s home on Elizabeth Street in Truro, N.S., on May 6.

The family says Dylan was playing in the back yard and his grandmother turned her back to put a dog on the leash and Dylan vanished.

He is presumed to have fallen into the nearby Lepper Brook and drowned.

Truro police and first responders spent a week searching the waterway, utilizing help from the Truro Fire Department’s ground search and rescue team, Nova Scotia’s Emergency Management Office, a police canine unit, a helicopter, aerial drones, a thermal imaging camera, along with a dive team with underwater cameras and mannequin tracker.

But Dylan’s body has never been recovered and the lack of definitive answers still gives his family hope.

They are planning to hold another search this Sunday, one of many they’ve held over the past six months.

It will come after weeks of mixed emotions for Jason.

His family has received ransom messages that demand bitcoins in exchange for Dylan’s safety, a cryptocurrency that would be difficult if not impossible to trace.

2:49 Truro, N.S. police say search for missing 3-year-old has moved into ‘recovery’ phase

Jason says that police have had to be involved in order to investigate.

Police tell him it’s a scam and it’s made him realize how cruel people can be.

“Because if it’s not true, then it takes a pretty sick person to send the grieving parents something like that,” Jason said.

“It’s pretty scary stuff.”

Then police in Bathurst, N.B., received numerous calls after a Facebook post alleged that Dylan had been in the city.

In a Facebook post, the Bathurst Police Force said they had investigated and spoke to the individual.

They told police that they had seen a Facebook post about Dylan and then remembered seeing a woman and a child walking down the street a week earlier. They told police they thought the child that looked like Dylan.

“There was no confirmation that the child seen a week early was actually Dylan,” Bathurst police wrote.

After reviewing video footage of the area and tracking down other potential witnesses police said their leads were either inconclusive or involved children who were not Dylan.

It was an earnest effort from someone who thought they were helping but for Jason, he says similar incidents are “overwhelming.”

“You know, it’s like, ‘oh, my God, there’s a chance it could be him,’ you know? But then a lot of the time that’s that’s been nothing,” Jason said.

“So it really it comes crashing down after that.”

Truro police say that Dylan Ehler is still an active and open missing person investigation but that there is no evidence to suggest foul play.

Until they get definitive answers, Jason says his family’s search will continue.