RCMP continue to search for Kienan Hebert
Posted Sep 8, 2011 6:56 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
RCMP continue to search for Kienan Hebert, who was last seen in his home in Sparwood, B.C. and may be with 47-year-old Randall Hopley, who could be driving a brown 1987 Toyota Camry with the B.C. license plate 098RAL.
Hebert was last seen when his family put him to bed Tuesday evening. By Wednesday morning, he was gone, prompting an air and ground search of the surrounding area.
“The family reported that they had put the child to bed the previous evening and then around 8:30 a.m. checked on the child to get him up for the day and the child was not in bed where he should be.” says Cpl. Dan Moskaluk.
He says ground searchers and a police dog are looking for the boy while a helicopter is searching from the air.
“The first priority is the search for the child, with investigators continuing to speak with the family and making inquiries in the community,” he explains.
The RCMP says the boy has red hair and was wearing Scooby Doo boxer shorts.
In 2008, Hopley was sentenced to 18 months in jail for a break-in that occurred the previous fall in Sparwood, according Alberta’s Crowsnest Pass Promoter.
The paper says he was also charged with one count of unlawful confinement and one count of abduction but those charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence.
“The charges stemmed from an incident where the main witness was a 10-year-old boy who was described as being a high-needs mentally challenged child,” the paper says. “The boy told his foster mother Hopley had broken into the home and on two occasions, tried to push the lad out of his bedroom window.”
Hopley claimed he tried to abduct the boy from foster care and transfer him to his biological parents for $2,800. A search of Hopley’s residence revealed pictures of the boy, a suitcase of children’s clothing, some of the boy’s medication and GoodNites underwear for children with bed-wetting problems.
Hopley has had 11 previous break-in convictions as well as having been found guilty of a sexual assault in 1985, according to the Promoter.
Moskaluk says Hopley does not know the child missing from Sparwood, and he won’t or can’t say why police believe the three-year-old might be with him.
Police are trying to cast the net as wide as possible. Officers in Calgary and the U.S. are involved in the search for Kienan.
Border guards are also on high alert, so if the man believed to have the boy heads in that direction, he won’t get very far, according to Tom Schreiber with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“If we have a vehicle description and it is a serious emergency… yes we can put it into our database,” he says.
Doris Stapleton with the RCMP E Division in Alberta says they’re working closely with B.C. Mounties.
“All our members in Alberta are aware of the missing boy. We are on heightened awareness at the moment, and we take this matter very, very seriously,” she says.
Sparwood is a little over three hours to Calgary and the same distance to cross into the States.
How the community is coping:
Sparwood is a small community in the Rockies with a population of less than 4,000. People there are crushed by Kienan’s disappearance.
Former Sparwood Mayor David Wilks says people in his community also came together when eight snowmobilers were killed in a avalanche three years ago. “I have lived there 16 years. The citizens of Sparwood are very close-knit and will work together to get anyone through any type of situation,” says Wilks.
He says people living there have a lot of experience dealing with tragedies.
“One has to recognize that in the coal industry that we are in, there were a number times that fatalities occurred underground that bonded the community together and that mentality has continued over the years,” he says.
Jill Kelly works at a local hotel where Kienan’s father, Paul, was manager. “Everybody here is extremely sad and worried,” she says. “He’s a very nice, caring man. He’s got a big family and he loves his kids. It’s affected everybody here. Everybody is so upset.”
She adds everyone is pitching in. “People are out searching, organizing search parties, people have taken time off work to go out and help… Here at the hotel, we were making coffee last night for them,” says Kelly.
