Detectives say they are investigating a possible sighting in Nevada of Garrett Bardsley, the Boy Scout who disappeared in the Uinta Mountains when he was 12 years old.
Nobody has reported seeing Bardsley since the Utah County boy left his father’s side to retrieve a dry pair of shoes while fishing near the Mirror Lake Highway in August 2004.
But Aug. 3, the Summit County Sheriff’s Office received a tip from the “America’s Most Wanted” television program that Bardsley was spotted with two men at a grocery store in Nevada at the end of July.
“A female in Elko, Nev., explained that she was 20 percent sure that she saw Garrett Bardsley in a Smith’s in Elko,” Summit County Sheriff’s Office Detective Ron Bridge said in a telephone interview Monday. “We receive a lot of tips like this, but this one actually came through ‘America’s Most Wanted,’ so it was a little different for us.”
The Sheriff’s Office sent an investigator this month to retrieve video footage from security cameras at Smith’s Food and Drug Center in Elko, Bridge said.
“We have seen the Smith’s footage from their security cameras. It’s not 100-percent clear, but the possibility of it being Garrett Bardsley is very, very slim,” he said.
The men officers are trying to identify also walked by a security camera inside a bank at the store, Bridge explained.
“We are still in the process of subpoenaing shopping records and bank video footage,” he said.
In Elko, Bridge said the Summit County investigator met with the store director at Smith’s and local law enforcement officials.
“We spoke with them about the people who are in the film, trying to get any information on them from a local law enforcement standpoint,” Bridge said. “Nobody knew them.”
The store director in Elko would not comment about the case when reached Tuesday by The Park Record.
“When a person is lost in the Uintas we literally have hundreds of phone calls into our dispatch center giving us tips,” Bridge said. “Some people get them from sources that are unorthodox, such as their pet. Some people are claiming that they are newly converted psychics.”
Still, every tip is investigated, he insisted.
“For this particular incident there is video footage, therefore, we are going to track that down until it is exhausted,” Bridge said.
Bridge wouldn’t say whether the missing boy’s father, Kevin Bardsley, has viewed security footage taken from the store.
“We are constantly in contact with Mr. Bardsley,” Bridge said. “What we talk to Mr. Bardsley about is simply between law enforcement and Mr. Bardsley.”