What this means for me and my parents is that the normally so quiet road outside of our house is now heavily patrolled by police, military, the fire brigade, dog patrols, helicopters, you name it!! And of course the entire village (only about 700 people live here), including my dad, have become involved in the search. Me, I am of course quite amused by all the action here and have made it my task to document this as well as possible... :-P
Oh, and he has not been found yet by the way. If he is even there, evidence therefore other than hearsay is pretty scarce, even if rumors go around in abundance... ;-)
I first heard the news when this MC patrol from the military decided to use our front yard as their base. The whole days yesterday these guys were going around the area where they think he is trying to prevent him from escaping from the forest.
The balcony turned out to be an excellent spot for following this spectacle. Since my dad knows the surroundings he got assigned to driving around and checking out roads and cabins where the dude could possibly hang out.
My dads truck with a fire car swooshing by rapidly. Curiously there didn't seem to be any preferred direction they went in, but they more seemed to just go randomly back and forth.
A police motorcyclist decided to take a break on our yard...
Of course my dad had to have a chat and get the latest results from the search. Which were... none, surprising noone. Don't miss the school bus in the background which also seemed to be involved in the search. :-P
Lotus was wondering what had happened to his normally so quiet balcony.
Me and my mom decided to join dad in his quest for the escapee. He seemed very bothered by my questions about what they were planning to do when and if they actually found him. I don't think he had a clue, like everyone else he just thought it was fun that something finally happened and that he got an excuse for only driving around and talking to people.
"Hellooo Mr. Missing Person, are you in there???"
"Hmmm, he couldn't have been so clever as to lock the door?? Naaaah!!"
We assumed he could not have gotten into this shack.
"Where on earth could he be??"
There were at least three police buses here, plus more other police and military units to count. I think the whole police force of Dalsland, my region, plus extras from Borås and Göteborg (about 2-3 hours away) have been called in.
No road was too small or winding to be checked out.
An unusual location for a fire truck. They had posted emergency as well as private vehicles and people at eyes distance around the whole forest to stop him from getting out unnoticed (should he be in there in the first place). I have to say I was quite tempted to just put on a black jacket and hood, get into the forest and run across the road between two such postings to see what would happen. Then I could go into my house again and enjoy the chaos and tumult from the balcony with a cup of coffee in my hand. :-)
If you wonder why there is someone on top of the fire truck our cell phone reception isn't that good in these desolate parts of the country...
This was an exciting moment when someone thought they had seen something, everyone was pointing to the left but apart from that not much seemed to happen.
Eventually they sent out a dog patrol to go scouting. But when it picked up a trace everyone was quickly called to another place, where a woman thought she had spotted someone in her barn.
The house was off limits for everyone but the police but I think virtually all of the town were gathered in the crossing leading up to it. I counted about 15-20 cars. :-P
It was getting dark and people gathered around the one guy with a police radio where the exciting hunt could be followed. The woman was not in the house anymore!! Could she have been taken hostage?? Or had she only gone to look for the missing guy? And what was the mysterious sound of someone banging on an oil barrel?? However, in the end all of this just turned out to be a false alarm.
When it got dark the hunt was called off and I took this surreal photo on our way home. Almost as surreal as this day had been.
Some flash-and-blur of the instrument panel. It gets boring quickly to look for something or someone you can't find... ;-)
Day 2 of the search. More military had been called in now and we had a brand new friend parked in our yard.
Of course my curious dad had to bribe them with some coffee in exchange for the latest news of the manhunt. Seemed like more police had been called in too.
And what was that between the tree tops if not.... a police helicopter!!! Nope, these guys are not going to give up that easily. No mental patients camping out in the woods and fishing in the lakes in this country. Though I have to say for someone dismissed as mentally ill he is pretty darn good at fooling all these so called sane people trying to find him.
"But what happened to the dogs?", Douglas curiously asked.
Don't worry, they were still there... On a shopping trip to the center me and mom saw three of them. They had changed strategy and were now walking along the roads trying to get a trace.
Not sure whether this was the same chopper or another one, but if you zoom in on it you can see something that at least I would say is a heat seeking camera. This was on the way to the center where they though he might be hiding out in a completely different area than our forest, namely "the old soccer field". :-) Probably as well-grounded a theory as that he would actually be in our forest.
Presently the search is still going on. There is more and more people coming in and the search has again moved back to our forest. I guess they ruled out the soccer field. Another bigger army truck just pulled in on our yard just a few minutes ago. I will fill you in with more details as soon as I know more.
In an anti-climax of majestic proportions the search has been called off. At least that what rumor has it. The guy outsmarted them and the Swedish military got bored after two days. This picture of a possy of cars that quickly drove up to our yard last night, stopped, chatted for a second or two, and then took off again at ravishing speeds will have to mark the ending point in this completely ludicrous story.
The final mystery...
Update: The man has been found!!! He was found sitting in the Bäckefors pizzeria, slowly chewing on a freshly baked Calzone (which sort of pizza it actually was has not been confirmed by multiple sources). So apparently the guy is in custody now. The end of an absurd story.
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