SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – About 100 volunteers joined local authorities in searching Tuesday for a Massachusetts woman who has been missing since spending a night in Portland’s Old Port a week ago.
The search shifted to South Portland after a woman called police to say she saw Lynne Moran late on Oct. 10, the night she disappeared.
Moran, 24, of Shrewsbury, Mass., was seen walking alongside a road near the Casco Bay Bridge in South Portland not long after she had been seen at Market and Middle streets in Portland, said Portland Deputy Chief William Ridge.
On Tuesday, volunteers joined game wardens, police officers and the Coast Guard in the search. Wardens used a plane to search South Portland while people on foot combed the woods and searched utility easements and along the waterfront.
Family members are fearful because Moran has never stayed out of contact for so long. She also failed to report to work as the assistant director of two homes for foster children, a job to which she is extremely dedicated, said her brother, John Moran.
John Moran said the family doesn’t know where she might have been going in South Portland.
“We’re not aware of anyone she would have been visiting in that area,” he said.
Moran, who grew up in Portland, went to lunch with friends on the afternoon of Oct. 10, then visited a bar in the Old Port. Later, she visited an acquaintance in an apartment on Market Street, where she left her purse and cell phone. She was intoxicated when she was later seen wearing a man’s plaid shirt and no shoes, police said.
John Moran said it is difficult to maintain hope and still prepare for the possibility that something terrible has happened.
“It’s just incredibly hard, because on the one hand you want to prepare yourself for the worst – you feel you have to prepare for the worst. But you do still hope. You just can’t accept that something has happened.”
Police ask anyone with information about her whereabouts to call 874-8575.
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