Authorities say they believe that they saw Travis Decker, an ex-soldier wanted in the death of his three daughters, near a remote Alpine Lake in the state of Washington, after a tip from hikers who said they saw a lonely person who was poorly prepared for the circumstances.
The Sheriff’s Office of Chelan County said on Tuesday in a Facebook message that tracking teams responded immediately, and a helicopter team saw a walker near Colchuk Lake, in a popular Cascade Range Backpacking Area called The Enchantments.
The off-trail walker ran out of sight when the helicopter passed, said the Sheriff office. Teams later found a track and K-9 teams followed the person to the area of the Ingalls Creek Trailhead, south of Leavenworth.
Authorities did not say when they saw the subject, but on Monday evening they gave a warning for residents in the Ingalls Creek and the Valleyhi community to lock up houses and vehicles and are looking for Decker.
Decker, 32, has been the target of a big manhunt since 2 June, when the representative of a sheriff found his truck and the bodies of his three daughters-the 9-year-old Paiten Decker, the 8-year-old Evelyn Decker and the 5-year-old Olivia Decker-op a campsite outside Leavenworth.
He had not brought the girls back to their mother’s house in Wenatchee, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Seattle, after a planned visit three days earlier.
Decker was an infantryman in the US Army from March 2013 to July 2021 and deployed in Afghanistan for four months in 2014. He has a training in navigation, survival and other skills, the authorities said. He once spent more than two months in the rear wood of the schedule.
Civil servants with a range of state and federal agencies have searched hundreds of square miles, much of it mountainous and remote, by land, water and air. The US Marshals service offered a reward of up to $ 20,000 for information that led to its conquest.
Last September his ex-wife, Whitney Decker, wrote in a petition to adjust their upbringing plan that his psychological problems had deteriorated and that he had become increasingly unstable, who often lived out of his truck. She tried to limit him to have visiting visits with their daughters at night until he found housing.
An autopsy on Friday determined the cause of death as suffocation, said the Sheriff office. The girls were bound with zip tires and had placed plastic bags over their heads.
