Press Releases

February 28, 2008

Two Wardens Rescue Teen in Nighttime Search

T16R5, Maine – A 19-year-old teen fading in and out of consciousness was rescued by two Maine Warden Service wardens at 12:30 a.m. today in a remote area of northern Aroostook County, and endured a 45-minute snowmobile ride to an awaiting ambulance wearing one of the warden’s snow pants to stay warm.

Lyman Messer, 19, of Fort Fairfield was reported missing by a friend around 11 p.m. Wednesday when he did not return from a snowmobile ride on Square Lake. He left a camp between 7:30 and 8 p.m. wearing a wool pea coat, T-shirt, shorts and black boots and said he would be back.

When he did not return within a few minutes, Messer’s friend, 22-year-old Jacob Chambers, took off on his snowmobile to look for him. He was forced to return to the camp because the machine wasn’t working properly.

At 11 p.m., Chambers called the Maine State Police which notified the Maine Warden Service. Warden Gary Sibley and Warden Adrian Marquis accessed the camp by snowmobile and were told that Messer was riding on the lake and possibly heading to an outlet that leads to Eagle Lake.

Messer was found about 30 yards into the woods on the other side of the lake, northwest of his camp, laying in the snow and curled up to keep warm.

“We started hollering for him and low and behold he hollered back,” said Warden Marquis. “I said, ‘Whoa!’ We were hoping for that but given the conditions and what he was wearing we were thinking the worst at that point.”

The search for Messer demonstrates the great lengths the Maine Warden Service will take to help out a person in need in the woods or the waters of Maine, according to Warden Sgt. Brian Gray, Sibley and Marquis’s supervisor.

“They did a great job,” he said.

Square Lake does not have any year-round camps on it, and is only accessible by snowmobile. Because the camps are vacant, there are no lights along the shoreline to guide nighttime snowmobilers. The temperature on the lake last night was 9-10 degrees, and snow was blowing, creating drifts.

The lake is popular for snowmobilers, and numerous tracks were in the snow when the wardens started their search. Even though snow was blowing and filling in the tracks, the two wardens were able to determine which tracks were made by Messer’s snowmobile. They followed the tracks, which looped and zig-zagged across the lake until they went up onto the shoreline on the other side and into the woods. The snowmobile came to rest against a tree and was not damaged. The wardens noticed that Messer had set out on foot, going from the woods to the lake and back again several times in snow that was three- to four-feet deep.

Sibley said that seeing the tracks go onto the shoreline and into the woods was a small sense of relief because they had feared that Messer may have reached the outlet between Square and Eagle lakes.

“We were afraid that he was going to be in the outlet in open water and that he had possibly drowned,” Sibley said.

The wardens followed Messer’s tracks 30 yards into the woods and started yelling for him. Messer was able to answer them. Sibley gave Messer his snow pants, and Marquis wrapped him in blankets and other clothes the wardens had brought along with them.

Messer was placed on Marquis’s snowmobile, and they drove approximately 12 miles to the closest plowed road, Route 161. An awaiting ambulance transported Messer to Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent.

Messer experienced frostbite. “I don’t know how much longer he had out there,” Marquis said. “He was lucky. I’m glad we found him when we did.”

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Two Wardens Rescue Teen in Nighttime Search