FBI joins search for missing Red Lake boys

RED LAKE, MINN. - A team of 10 volunteer searchers deployed Thursday to the yard where Tristan Anthony White, 4, and his brother, Avery Lee Stately, 2, were last seen.

The boys had been playing Wednesday morning outside their house in the woodsy Walking Shield area of Red Lake, and sometime between 9:30 and 9:50 they went missing.

"I had a dream last night, and I saw a hole," the search leader told his team members, assigned to comb through the bramble thickets behind the house.

"So look for holes."

But first, he gave each searcher a pinch of tobacco, and they took turns tossing it into a small wood fire burning in the yard.

The smoke rose, a plea for a successful search.

A man, a relative of the missing boys, stood by the fire and greeted each searcher in turn.

"Mii-gwetch," he said. "Thank you."

Searches by hundreds of volunteers, some on all-terrain vehicles or on horseback, some scouring the woods from the air, turned up no sign Thursday of the two young brothers.

"It's not been a very joyous Thanksgiving here," Red Lake Tribal Chairman Floyd (Buck) Jourdain Jr. said late Thursday, as darkness fell and the last of the search teams came out of the woods.

"Many of those people didn't eat dinner today," he said. "They've been out looking for those little boys. There are citizens from surrounding communities here, too."

About 20 FBI agents and personnel from the U.S. Border Patrol, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and other state and federal agencies joined the search Thursday, and efforts to find the missing boys are expected to resume this morning.

FBI special agent Paul McCabe said that scores of law enforcement officers also were investigating whether the boys might have been abducted.

"While this is going on out here," he said, gesturing toward searchers, "there's just as strenuous an effort going on to determine whether foul play may have been involved."

He said that no Amber Alert was issued "because it doesn't meet the criteria. You need some proof or information that they were abducted, and we don't have that.

"But what we're doing with the media, getting the word out, is about as good as an Amber Alert."

Jourdain also said there is "nothing to indicate the children have been abducted -- no evidence that someone pushed them into a car or something. But we aren't ruling out anything.

"They're so young, so small -- you wouldn't think they'd get very far on their own," he said. "We've looked high and low, but we can't find them.

"It's been a very frustrating two days."

Jourdain said that the children were "just out playing in front, and the family called for them, and there was no response." When a quick search through neighboring yards turned up nothing, family members called police, and within 45 minutes the Red Lake police were conducting a ground search.

McCabe said that officers also searched about 30 houses in the area, including crawl spaces.

The Walking Shield area is near the reservation's main entrance off Hwy. 89. Searchers had to move slowly and carefully to get through woods thick with brambles, brush piles and downed branches. A blanket of oak leaves covered much of the ground.

Colder weather is expected

Temperatures fell into the 30s as the search wound down Thursday, and forecasters said light rain or snow was possible after midnight. Colder weather is expected this weekend.

The team that began with tobacco offerings scared up a rabbit and poked flashlights into woodpile tunnels, occasionally calling the boys' names, but found no sign of them.

"Watch out for people's dogs," the leader said as he gave his search instructions. "They may not all be tied up." And he had the searchers practice an Ojibwe word, gwajema, for the dogs.

"It means 'go away,' " he said.

Al Downwind brought his children -- Danielle, 11, Alvin, 13, and Brandon, 7 -- to join in the ground search.

"We felt the need to help," he said. "All I know is that there are two young boys missing."

Danielle said only that she was tired, "and sad."

"It's a tight-knit community," McCabe said, and the disappearance of two children inevitably caused many people, Red Lakers and visitors alike, to think of the loss suffered by the Red Lake Nation in March 2005, when several children were among the victims of a shooting at Red Lake High School.

"It hits hard, especially with how young they are," said Doug Kingbird, who rode his ATV through ditches, brush and fields for several hours Thursday.

"It isn't looking good, with rain and snow maybe moving in tonight."

Tristan is about 3 feet 6. He was wearing a dark blue Spider-Man jacket with yellow trim, jeans and winter boots. Avery, about 2 feet tall, had on a gray pullover sweat shirt with "Timberland" on the front. He was wearing faded jeans and Spider-Man tennis shoes.

Anyone with information should contact the FBI at 612-376-3200, or the Red Lake Tribal Police Department at 218-679-3313.

Chuck Haga • 612-673-4514 • crhaga@startribune.com