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After more than eight hours, a University of Maine student who went missing Saturday morning during a fraternity initiation process returned mostly unharmed just before 2:30 p.m. the same day.
Joshua Gilmore, 19, of Levant, went missing behind the Sigma Chi Heritage House near the Stillwater River while searching for an artifact as part of the initiation process into the fraternity, according to UMaine Police Chief Noel March.
When he failed to return after 15 minutes, the fraternity’s members went looking for him, and called UMaine Public Safety for assistance around 8:10 a.m.
Gilmore, a junior financial economics student, was later spotted walking out of the woods near the Steam Plant parking lot, the university said. He was examined by doctors at the Heritage House, the search effort’s headquarters, before being transported to Eastern Maine Medical Center where he was treated for possible hypothermia, according to UMaine spokesman Joe Carr. He was released by 6:45 p.m. according to the hospital.
Gilmore’s disappearance around 6 a.m. sparked a multi-agency search involving the Maine Warden Service; Maine State Police; the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department; the Orono, Old Town and UMaine police departments; and the Orono, Old Town, Penobscot Nation and Milford fire departments.
The Down East Emergency Medicine Institute assisted in coordinating the search, and the UMaine Volunteer Ambulance Corps was on hand.
Gilmore was “cut up” but fine, according to UMaine Dean of Students Robert Dana. The student never made it into the water, he said, but covered significant ground while he was missing.
“Normally, as I’m thinking about this, a person isn’t going to cross a tarred road and keep going along a river,” said Game Warden Kevin Adam. “I talked to [Gilmore] real briefly. This is what he did at least once.”
March said a police interview with Gilmore is coming up, but his first priority was to reunite the student with his family, who were “holding vigil along with UMaine officials” at the Heritage House.
The effort involved several search-and-rescue boats from the Orono, Old Town and Milford fire departments, a Maine Department of Conservation helicopter and dogs, according to March.
Volunteers conducted a grid search, which involved marching in straight lines. The search went in the opposite direction of where Gilmore ended up, through muddy forests, private lawns and wetlands on the river’s edge.
At least 80 student volunteers, most of them from fraternities, scanned areas of the Stillwater riverbank from the Heritage House to an abandoned mill building at the end of North Main Avenue and Penobscot Street in Orono — nearly one mile.
Benjamin Spencer, a former Sigma Chi pledge, said he went through a similar initiation process, which he said is a tradition for the fraternity. Spencer had to abandon his pledging process because of time constraints last semester, but said he plans to try again next semester.
“I enjoyed the pledge process so much,” he said. “At no time did I ever feel in danger or anything like that.”
Spencer said he couldn’t go into the details of the pledging process because of the high level of secrecy in the fraternity, but that he would break the silence and alert authorities if he thought anyone was in danger.
“What happened with Josh has nothing to do with secrecy,” Spencer said. “It could have happened to anyone. He just got lost.”
Interfraternity Council spokesman Joel Martin released a statement Sunday thanking the UMaine community for a quick response.
“The Interfraternity Council takes incidents like this very seriously, and we will discuss the consequences of this situation. In the meantime, we want to focus on the positive reaction of the university and the community to help in the search, and for the quick response of the municipal and state agencies involved. We are very thankful that Joshua is well and recovering with his family,” Martin wrote.
Director of Campus Activities and Student Engagement Gustavo Burkett sent an e-mail Sunday to all student organizations announcing an upcoming investigation into all new member or initiation activities.
“This investigation will begin as soon as possible and in the meantime all organizations must refrain from any and all activities that could be considered hazing or that may humiliate, degrade, or risk emotional and/or physical harm, regardless of a person’s willingness to participate. If you are unclear or question your organization’s activities, do not engage in them,” Burkett wrote.
Carr and Dana said they didn’t know of any history behind the initiation process. Dana didn’t know whether this was a case of hazing, but said the university will convene a panel to examine that after a police investigation.
“It might have crossed a line,” Dana said Sunday of the incident. “If [hazing] is, in fact, going on anywhere, it needs to stop.”
Gilmore said Sunday night he was settling back into his dorm room and declined to comment about the ordeal, saying he wanted distance himself from the incident.
“I’m OK,” Gilmore said. “It’s really nothing major.”
Bangor Daily News