St. Johns County Sheriff’s Bloodhound Teams Find Missing Adult with Autism and Confirm Suspect Trail

November 25, 2020 scentevidencek9

St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office Bloodhound Teams are doing their part to Bring The Lost Home and create a safer community after having successful trails within a few weeks of each other. SJSO Dep. Nick Cooper and K9 Star located a missing adult with autism on 11/24/20 and Dep. Melanie Merritt and K9 Daisy confirmed an 18-hour-old suspect trail on Oct. 8, 2020. The SJSO Bloodhound Teams had both participated in Scent Evidence K9 scent discriminate K9 and Missing Person Protocol training provided through the Bringing The Lost Home Project just 2 weeks ago. Scent Evidence K9 CEO, Paul Coley, stated, “The great job and commitment by the SJSO to provide advanced K9 search response is already saving lives in their community.”

St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office Bloodhound Team Find Missing Adult with Autism

SJSO Dep. Nick Cooper and K9 Star responded to a missing person call involving an adult with autism. They trailed the scent extracted from the target’s pillowcase an hour and a half after they were last seen.

The K9 Team casted the front of the house then made a right down the driveway before taking a left turn on a major road where they locating the missing person approximately 0.6 miles away just inside the wood line. K9 Star, a scent discriminate Bloodhound, made the positive ID alert.

After the successful missing person recovery, the SJSO provided a Scent Evidence K9 Scent Kit to the family so that they would have an uncontaminated scent article ready in case of a future event.

Dep. Cooper and K9 Star had participated in scent discriminate K9 training with Scent Evidence K9 CEO, Paul Coley, as part of the Bringing The Lost Home Project the week before the deployment.

Thanks to the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office for their commitment to creating a safer community for their residents and for Bringing The Lost Home!

New SJSO Bloodhound, K9 Daisy, Confirms Suspect Trail

St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, Dep. Melanie Merritt and her brand new bloodhound, K9 Daisy, successfully confirmed an 18-hour aged trail of a suspect during a search conducted on Oct. 8, 2020, in St. Johns County. K9 Daisy met Dep. Merritt only a few weeks before and the new K9 team are already providing results that create a safer community for the people of St. Johns County Florida.

K9 Daisy was trained by Scent Evidence K9 and has been making headlines since she was a puppy after being named to honor Rep. Scott Plakon’s wife, Susie, who passed from Alzheimer’s Disease. Daisies were Susie Plakon’s favorite flower. K9 Daisy is specially-trained to find missing persons and bring them home safe. THANK YOU St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office for your hard work! Read more about K9 Daisy HERE.

St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office Enhance K9 Resources with Bringing The Lost Home Project

St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office held a well-attended press conference announcing their expanded K9 resources and Scent Kit Program to help recover missing persons faster and save lives. The expanded K9 Training program, Missing Person Response Protocol Training, and Alzheimer’s Awareness Training are part of The Bringing The Lost Home Project championed by Rep. Scott Plakon. The Bringing The Lost Home Project is part of a bill in partnership with The Alzheimer’s Project that provides advanced K9 search response methods and innovative scent collection technology to participating Florida agencies. The bill, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2019 and 2020 has so far included Sheriff’s Offices and Police Departments in Bay, Sumter, Seminole, Leon(Tallahassee PD), St. Johns, Franklin, Lee, and Marion Counties.

Bringing The Lost Home also increases community awareness of wandering events that occur with high-risk populations with Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementia and autism. The BTLH Project implements a Scent Kit Program in each county to provide residents with a way to pre-collect the unique scent of a family member or someone they care for that is at risk of wandering and going missing. Having a Scent Kit prepared in advance gives K9 responders an uncontaminated scent article to search with, resulting in faster recovery times and more accurate searches. Read all about the Bringing The Lost Home Project in the News coverage from the St. Johns Press Conference below.

St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office expanding K-9 tracking program – News 4 Jax