LEWISTON – A search for a suspected drug trafficker in Thorncrag Bird Sanctuary on Monday ended when a half-dozen officers and a tracking dog found the man hiding in the woods.
Police searched the woods for two hours before 37-year-old Brian Lagasse was found crouched on the ground, half buried in snow.
“He was hunkered down behind a tree,” said police Officer Ryan Guay, one of the officers who found Lagasse about 5:15 p.m.
Lagasse and another man were arrested on drug charges.
Police said Lagasse had fled on foot after he was found with three other people and a supply of drugs about 4 p.m. at the dead end of East Avenue.
A police officer who approached the group on a routine patrol searched the truck Lagasse had been sitting in. Police said they found a pouch containing marijuana, cocaine and equipment to prepare and use the drugs.
“As soon as he saw what I had found, he bolted,” said police Sgt. David St. Pierre.
Police descended on the area, with officers surrounding the 300-acre sanctuary while others combed a network of trails winding through it.
Lagasse was clad in a long, leather trench coat, black sweat pants and several gold chains around his neck, police said. One arm was in a cast.
Lagasse, who lives on Bartlett Street in Lewiston, was wanted on two felony drug warrants out of Michigan when he fled, police said. Those warrants charge him with cocaine possession.
Working from maps of Thorncrag, police worked their way along a network of snowmobile and snowshoe trails snaking through the sanctuary. Others spread out along Hogan and Old Greene roads, on Montello Street and at several points around the power lines.
Lewiston firefighters went to the scene to provide a hand-held infrared device to assist in the search. Police called for a game warden with snowmobiles as the hunt continued without success.
As the sun began to set, there were shouts from the woods, not far from the area where the chase had begun.
“Get on the ground! Show me your hands!” Officer Tim Morin shouted from the woods.
Sarge, a Lewiston police tracking dog, had picked up Lagasse’s scent near a hill, investigators said. Officers found a hat in the snow and then the dog charged.
“He started digging and climbing up the hill,” said Morin, the dog handler. “I knew we had him.”
Police said they found syringes on Lagasse when he was arrested. He was walked out of the woods and back to East Avenue, where his companions – a man and two women – were still detained by police.
Lagasse was charged with trafficking in cocaine and furnishing marijuana. The man he had been sitting in the truck with, 37-year-old Craig Bouthot, of Elm Street, Mechanic Falls, was arrested on the same charges.
Neither of the women was charged.
Lagasse was examined by paramedics at the scene for cuts and scrapes. He was later taken to the Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn. Lewiston police contacted prosecutors in Michigan, who said they did not plan to extradite Lagasse back to that state.
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