Oregon police search for missing Lynn native

LYNN – Police in Oregon are searching for a Lynn native after they found his abandoned car two weeks ago with a suicide note inside.Investigators with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon are combing the area near Winchester Bay, a picturesque span of beach on Oregon’s southern coastline, for Robert Breed Jr. after they found his car abandoned near a lighthouse, said Dwes Hutson, Douglas County Sheriff’s public information officer.Hutson said investigators believe Breed lives in Seattle.Hutson said they found Breed’s 2007 Ford Focus on March 9 and towed it on March 16. That’s when deputies found the suicide note, Hutson said.Breed graduated from Lynn English High School in 1982, according to his classmate and friend, Ron Parrish. He is a member of a prominent Lynn family that helped settle Lynn in the early 1600s.Parrish said friends in Lynn who know Breed are extremely worried about his well being.”I know he was crying out for help,” said Parrish, who spoke with Breed daily on Facebook for the past three years.Breed served in the Army for 18 years and was stationed near Seattle, said his brother, Allen Breed, in an email to The Daily Item. Parrish said Breed had recently left the Army, although Parrish wasn’t sure why. But he said it may have something to do with Breed’s family troubles: Breed was going through a divorce and recently another break up, Parrish said.”I knew he was struggling quite a bit,” he said.Lynn native April Sylvia is also a longtime friend of Breed’s. In an e-mail to The Daily Item from her current home in Kentucky, Sylvia said the entire Lynn community who knew Breed is filled with anxiety.”I think we all worried about him,” she wrote, calling his disappearance “very unusual.”She said she also frequently communicates with Breed on Facebook and that she hadn’t heard anything from him in the past couple weeks, but at the time didn’t think anything of it.”There’s a lot going through my head right now, I do hope he is OK,” she wrote.Parrish said March 5 or 6 was the last time he knew of anyone speaking with Breed via Facebook.Michael Lewis, a Lynn resident who also went to high school with Breed, said he missed a call from Breed on March 3, and that was the last time he heard from him.Lewis said Breed stayed in his apartment this past summer when he came to visit family and friends in Lynn. Lewis said he knows Breed was struggling through a break up but that he couldn’t believe Breed might commit suicide.”He never once, ever, mentioned anything about suicide,” Lewis said.Lewis described Breed as “pretty upbeat” the last time he spoke with him.”He was looking into possibly opening a bar in the Seattle area,” Lewis said.Like Breed’s other friends, Lewis said he is uneasy about Breed’s disappearance.”I’m holding out hope,” he said. “I’m hoping they find him, I’m hoping it’s just a nervous breakdown or something.”Douglas County deputies describe Breed as 5 feet 11 inches tall with brown hair and blue eyes and weighing 195 pounds.They are asking anyone with information on Breed’s whereabouts to call the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Detective’s Division at 541-440-4458.Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].