250 soldiers join search for missing mountain biker in Halifax area

CTV Atlantic: Soldiers join search for biker The military has been called in to help look for a missing mountain biker in the Halifax area. Marty Leger hasn’t been seen last Thursday.

About 250 soldiers have joined in the search for a missing mountain biker in the Halifax area.

Police say 30-year-old Marty Leger went biking alone around noon on Thursday. He was expected to return home around 4 p.m. but failed to show up.

When he failed to return home, Leger’s family went looking for him. They found his vehicle at the end of Spider Lake Road in Waverley and reported him missing shortly after 8:30 p.m. Thursday.

Police, search crews and helicopters have been combing the Spider Lake area of Waverley since Friday, but so far there are no signs of the missing man.

“Over the weekend we’ve had upwards of 200 searchers from the ground search and rescue teams that have been very hard working and dedicated to finding Mr. Leger. We were not able to know if we could sustain the same sort of numbers, so we put the ask out to the military and they have agreed to come and are very much in action,” says MacRae.

About 250 soldiers, mostly from 5th Canadian Division Support Base Gagetown in New Brunswick, joined in the search Monday morning.

“All of our soldiers are trained specifically in military search, which has good applicability to this, so understanding the requirements to search slowly, deliberately, and some of the same characteristics that are employed by civilian ground search and rescue,” says Lt.-Col. Chris Ayotte of CFB Gagetown.

RCMP Cpl. Scott MacRae says about 350 people and three helicopters are scouring about 65 square kilometres of dense woods and rough terrain.

The RCMP took Leger’s family up in a helicopter Monday to show them the scope of the densely-wooded area.

“On a bike you can cover a lot of ground and who knows, he might be far away,” says RCMP pilot Larry Labadie. “Who knows what happened.”

Searcher Colleen Blake has been on scene every day. She says the area is large, complex, and thick with trees, bogs and insects.

“It’s very easy to get turned around. If you go off a trail, only by about 20 feet, you could get lost,” says Blake, of Halifax Regional Search and Rescue.

On the weekend, police had asked the driver of a silver car seen in the area the day Leger disappeared to come forward. Police say the man did come forward and confirmed he had seen Leger’s car, but he never saw Leger or his mountain bike.

The search and police investigation will continue Tuesday. Police say they have reason to believe Leger is still in the woods.

Leger is about six feet tall and weighs 260 pounds. He has short hair, a beard and a moustache.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Kelland Sundahl