Tuesday proved to be a busy day for the Huron County Sheriff’s Office, with even Sheriff Kelly Hanson getting pulled into the action AFTER a sergeant checked an assumed abandoned and Ohio-plated car in Lake Township.
The vehicle had been reported to the office on Monday, November 21, after a Huron County Road Commission snow plow driver noticed a car parked off the roadway on M-25. The smaller white passenger car caught his eye, he told deputies, because he had asked the driver, a 50-year-old woman, while plowing on Sunday to move her car off the roadway. She obliged, pulling off near Oak Beach Road and he continued his work, giving it no thought until he passed the car again the next day, this time without its driver.
At this time, he also noticed foot tracks leading to a door on a nearby cottage that was swinging in the wind as if it had been broken into. Following the report, a computer check of the car showed that it was not stolen, and a further search of nearby cottages found them undisturbed, with the open door probably unlatching with the recent high winds in the area.
However, a call to Columbus, Ohio police and a wellness check later, it was learned by officers involved that the woman often suffers from bouts of mental illness and was last seen on Friday, November 18 in Columbus. With family contact information in hand, Sheriff Kelly Hanson and Caseville Fire Chief Ben Willenberg coordinated with deputies to begin a search. 40 minutes later, a deputy found the woman about 3.5 miles away from her car, resisting communication at first before calming and telling officers she was looking for her boyfriend.
Both she and her boyfriend have no connections to the area, so it is unclear how she ended up so far from home. While she had not been staying in the cottage the department searched earlier, the woman had indeed been staying at a cottage she had found unlocked, with the owner later saying that aside from food being eaten, there was no damage.
The woman was taken to a local hospital for further evaluation and treatment, with family arrangements being made to get her back home and into further treatment.
