Seattle, Jun 11 (AP) Authorities say they believe they spotted Travis Decker, an ex-soldier wanted in the deaths of his three daughters, in the remote back country of Washington state, after receiving a tip from hikers who said they saw a lone person who appeared to be ill-prepared for the conditions.
The Chelan County Sheriff's office said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that tracking teams responded immediately, and a helicopter crew spotted a lone, off-trail hiker near Colchuk Lake, in a popular Cascade Range backpacking area called The Enchantments.
The lone hiker ran from sight as the helicopter passed, the sheriff's office said. Teams later found a trail, and K-9 teams tracked the person to the area of the Ingalls Creek Trailhead, south of Leavenworth.
Authorities did not say when they spotted the subject, but late on Monday night they issued an alert for residents in the Ingalls Creek and the Valleyhi community to lock homes and vehicles and to be on the lookout for Decker.
Investigators have been looking for Travis Caleb Decker, 32, since the night of May 30, when he failed to return the girls to their mother's home in Wenatchee, about 160 kilometres east of Seattle, after a scheduled visit.
Three days later, a sheriff's deputy discovered the bodies of nine-year-old Paityn Decker, eight-year-old Evelyn Decker and five-year-old Olivia Decker down an embankment at the Rock Island Campground west of Leavenworth.
The site is about 18 kilometres from the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from the US-Mexico border to the US-Canada border, and it is connected to the newly focused search area by backcountry trails.
Decker was an infantryman in the US Army from March 2013 to July 2021 and deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2014. He has training in navigation, survival and other skills, authorities said. He once spent more than two months living in the backwoods off the grid.
Officials have searched hundreds of square miles, much of it mountainous and remote, by land, water and air.
Last September, his ex-wife, Whitney Decker, wrote in a petition to modify their parenting plan that his mental health issues had worsened and that he had become increasingly unstable, often living out of his truck. She sought to restrict him from having overnight visits with the girls until he found housing.
An autopsy on Friday determined the cause of death to be suffocation, the sheriff's office said. The girls had been bound with zip ties and had plastic bags placed over their heads. (AP) RUK
RUK