Whitehorse Daily Star

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DEPARTURE PROMPTS SEARCH – Grainy surveillance footage shows Kathreen Denbrok leaving Whitehorse General Hospital last Sunday afternoon. Photo courtesy RCMP

Search for woman continues

The 37-year-old woman who went missing after walking out of the Secure Medical Unit at Whitehorse General Hospital (WGH) has been identified as Kathreen Denbrok.

By Will Johnson on May 31, 2011

The 37-year-old woman who went missing after walking out of the Secure Medical Unit at Whitehorse General Hospital (WGH) has been identified as Kathreen Denbrok.

The RCMP have also released a photo of her, and ask anyone who sees her to contact them immediately.

"The search is continuing,” Sgt. Don Rogers, a spokesperson for the Whitehorse RCMP, said this morning.

"We followed up on a number of leads, but none of them yielded a positive result.”

Denbrok is four feet, eight inches tall, weighs 95 pounds and is Caucasian with short brown hair.

She was wearing blue hospital pajamas consisting of a button-up shirt and elastic waist trousers, hospital booties, a white cable knit sweater and a double-layered white or cream coloured toque.

She may have been carrying a blue Bible.

Denbrok was caught on camera running down Hospital Road. She crossed over the visitors' parking lot and went out of camera range.

The RCMP are co-ordinating a search and rescue plan with auxiliary constables, members of the police dog service and the Whitehorse District Search and Rescue.

They are searching the area between Long Lake and Grey Mountain Road on foot, as well as using mountain bikes and all-terrain vehicles.

"The search of the trail network will continue today and later tonight using both RCMP and Whitehorse District Search and Rescue members,” said Rogers.

The woman is known to frequent the downtown core and the riverbank.

Val Pike, the spokesperson for WGH, said the woman had been a patient since May 17 and was an "involuntary admission.”

Anyone who may have seen this person is asked to contact the Whitehorse RCMP at 667-5555, or to call 9-1-1.

Comments (4)

Up 0 Down 0

marten on Jun 3, 2011 at 3:36 pm

Great response Don. Glad to hear she's found and ok.

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Francias Pillman on Jun 2, 2011 at 1:46 pm

But criticizing is fun, Don. It keeps people on their toes. Accepting everything at face value benefits no one. Every parent should teach their kids to question everything. Especially to question authority.

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Don Rogers on Jun 2, 2011 at 8:15 am

Actually JC there were no other photos to show a better description. We also have to weight the rights of the individual and the need to know of the public. We take this very seriously and don't release a photo of a person who has done no wrong lightly. The duty to locate this person before they came to harm is the overriding factor in publishing a photo. Once she was located we removed that photo immediately from the RCMP website. Perhaps you could recognize the good work done by the searchers who found her instead of criticizing the efforts that were made to locate her.

Up 0 Down 0

JC on May 31, 2011 at 8:35 am

And we're supposed to recognize her by this photo? Surely there must be a close up of her somewhere.

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