Search for missing woman comes up empty in Lynn

LYNN – Police will regroup and pick other locations after a State Police search of the Saugus River Friday morning did not find missing Peabody resident Alice Nunes’ car.Trooper Patrick Foley and two other members of the State Police underwater recovery unit spent an hour searching the river between the Belden Bly Bridge and Ballard Street Bait Shop in a small boat. The troopers towed a yellow cylinder roughly a yard long called a side-scan sonar and used a viewer to check for objects on the river bottom. They searched the river between low and high tide when it was about 10 to 15 feet deep, Foley said.”All things considered, we’ve eliminated that area,” Foley said.Nunes, a 58 year-old Lowell Street resident and mother, was last heard from in a cellular telephone call to her daughter on the night of Dec. 15. According to police, she said, “I’m about to hit water,” before the call broke off. The transmission bounced off a cell tower in Wyoma Square, indicating the call was made within a 15-mile radius.Searches of local ponds, including Sluice near the Briarcliff Lodge boat ramp, and other water bodies turned up no sign of the missing woman’s black Lexus. State Police first searched the river on Wednesday after Stoneham Boat Center owner Tim Horgan told Peabody Police that several drivers mistakenly drove into his parking lot on the night Nunes disappeared thinking it was a detour around the closed bridge.Horgan speculated that it would have been easy for a confused motorist to drive down the ramp into the water.Officer Anne Magner is assigned to the Lynn Police missing persons unit and has helped with the search since Nunes’ disappearance.”It’s very puzzling. The family just not knowing is hard,” Magner said.