By JOHN FLOWERS

MIDDLEBURY — For four long months, hundreds of volunteers and investigators wielding state-of-the-art equipment had combed through Middlebury in an effort to find missing Middlebury College student Nicholas Garza.

That search came to a cathartic end in the Otter Creek in downtown Middlebury on Tuesday with the chance discovery of Garza’s body by the very man who had coordinated the massive search since the college freshman disappeared on campus during the evening of Feb. 5.

“There’s no feeling of exhilaration,” said Middlebury Police Chief Tom Hanley, who spotted Garza’s remains submerged within a mound of floating wood and other debris that had gathered on the Marble Works side of the Otter Creek, near the base of the falls.

“There’s no celebration here. This is a tragic story with a tragic ending.”

An autopsy was scheduled to be performed at the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington on Wednesday to confirm the identity of the deceased and cause of death. But a wallet found within clothing on the remains yielded Garza’s ID, leaving authorities little doubt that the long search for Nick had ended with the anticipated but dreaded results.

The discovery ended a longsuffering vigil for the Garza family, including Nick’s mother, Natalie, and his younger brother, Damon, who had relocated to Middlebury from their native Albuquerque, N.M., to monitor, and participate in, the search.

“On May 27, 2008, our beautiful Nicholas was recovered from Otter Creek,” reads a statement posted by the family on the Web site nicholasgarza.org. “We are filled with unspeakable grief and sadness with the loss of our beloved boy. We thank everyone for their prayers and support.”

MIDDLEBURY — Natalie Garza, the mother of missing Middlebury College
freshman Nicholas Garza, has asked participants in Green Up Day to keep
their eyes peeled for clothing or items belonging to the 19-year-old as
they’re combing Addison County roads for trash on Saturday, May 3.

Nicholas Garza was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved red, button-down shirt
and white, size-12 tennis shoes on Feb. 5, the night he went missing.
His cell phone, wallet and dorm access card have not been found.

Anyone who finds items matching this profile is asked to contact the Middlebury Police Department at 388-3191.

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Corrects formatting issues with last news alert.

By MEGAN JAMES

MIDDLEBURY — Just past midnight last Friday morning the Middlebury Police Department and two Vermont State Police troopers floodlit a portion of the Otter Creek behind the baseball diamond at Middlebury Union High School and scanned the water for signs of missing Middlebury College student Nicholas Garza.

They were called to the site after a search and rescue agency from Maine, which had been taking photographs of the river in an aerial assessment on Thursday, identified a suspicious object in its photos late Thursday night.

But after two hours probing the dark water — and at the end of another search of the area led by the Colchester Technical Rescue Squad from 6:30 a.m. until sunset on Friday — authorities were no closer to solving the mystery of the 19-year-old’s disappearance.

It was about a week ago that the Maine agency, Down East Emergency Medical Institute (DEEMI), contacted Middlebury Police Chief Tom Hanley offering to help. DEEMI volunteers spent Thursday flying at about 500 feet over the Otter Creek and a portion of Lake Champlain, snapping hundreds of photographs along the way.

“The cameras, by virtue of the lighting conditions, can pick up objects as low as 15 feet below the surface of the water,” Hanley explained on Friday afternoon.

At the end of the day DEEMI flew back to Maine where an analyst went through the pictures for suspicious objects.

“In one of their early images they found an object in the water in this area,” Hanley said, referring to a section of the river behind the high school that until now has not been searched. “They didn’t know what it was. Clearly it wasn’t a rock or a tree; it was just a foreign object.”

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