'I don't think anyone's giving up': Search for missing Shamattawa boy enters 4th day

The search for a missing non-verbal six-year-old boy in Shamattawa First Nation continues to expand, with more resources arriving in the northeastern Manitoba fly-in community Saturday.

Johnson Redhead was last seen on Wednesday morning, after he went to his school's breakfast program but didn't show up to class after that, RCMP previously said.

Sgt. Paul Manaigre said Saturday that two flights of searchers arrived Friday night and two more would arrive during the day, bringing 30 to 40 more experienced searchers from Winnipeg, Thompson and Pimicikamak Cree Nation to join the ground crews of about 50 to 80 community members in Shamattawa.

"Now it's just a matter of putting them out there … getting into the woods. This is where we believe he is," said Manaigre, who spoke to CBC on Saturday afternoon after a ground search.

A helicopter search of the riverbanks was planned for later in the afternoon, he said.

Manaigre also said he met with Johnson Redhead's mother and father on Friday.

"She was hopeful that we're going to have some results.… That was hard seeing her," he said, becoming emotional. 

"It puts the human side of it," said Manaigre. "It's a six year old boy. You got to find him."

Johnson, who was last seen wearing a blue hoodie with a grey hood, is believed to have left the school area Wednesday, sparking a large-scale search of the area by community members and RCMP. In the days since, the search crews have "grown exponentially," said Manaigre, as more resources arrive in the fly-in community.

Members of the boy's family are involved in the search and have set up a camp near the search area. 

"Family is not giving up and they just wanna be out there, they won't come home yet, until they found him," Johnson's aunt Sheila Reigns wrote in a Facebook post Saturday.

"Let's not give up. I know it's getting exhausting and tiring."

Manaigre said the search has been largely focused on bushes in the west of the community, near its nursing station, after tracks were spotted in the gravel pits there. It's not yet known if the tracks are Johnson's.

Three main search teams with GPS were expected to conduct a grid search of that area Saturday afternoon, Manaigre said, walking the area back and forth in a line, about six metres apart, then inputting the data into a map to track which areas have been covered.