Kin: Why
was hiker left alone?
By Marie Szaniszlo
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Outward
Bound Wilderness instructors waited for five hours - until after
they found the body of a South Boston girl who had gone missing in
110-degree heat - before calling for help, the not-for-profit’s
president said yesterday.
The family of 16-year-old Elisa D. Santry wants to know why she was
hiking in that heat and why she was left alone.
“It’s not fair. It’s not right,” said her brother, Steve Woods.
“When I went to summer camp, there was a staff person at the front
of the group, in the middle and at the back to make sure no one was
left behind . . . In 110-degree weather, why would they let those
children wander?”
The instructors began searching for Santry about 6 p.m. Sunday with
five other youths they had taken on a hike in Utah, Outward Bound
president Mickey Freeman said. Both instructors had satellite
phones, but neither called authorities until 11 p.m., after they
found Santry’s body about a quarter mile off the trail.
“There’s no reason to believe (when they began the search) that
something critical had happened,” Freeman said. “The instructors did
what they were supposed to do . . . The instructors are trained” in
first aid and search-and-rescue techniques.
The Utah medical examiner’s office is investigating Santry’s death,
but autopsy test results could take four to eight weeks.
When asked why the group was hiking in such heat, Freeman said
students are told to drink four quarts of water a day, and there was
still water in her bottle when she was found. Like all Outward Bound
Wilderness students, Santry carried a whistle. But it remained
unclear yesterday exactly when - or why - she became separated from
her group, Freeman said.
Earlier, one instructor had stayed
behind with a student with an ankle injury until that teenager could
be flown out by helicopter, he said. The other instructor and
students apparently assumed Santry was with those two.
The group was on its 16th day of a 22-day course, during which
Santry had written her mother to complain that some of the other
students were bullying her, Freeman said. It was unclear yesterday
whether that had anything to do with her disappearance.
“She was my baby sister,” Woods said. “It kills my mother because
all she ever wanted was a little girl. She had three boys and it
took 10 years before my sister came along.”
At Sullivan’s on Castle Island, where Santry worked, manager Maryann
Sullivan said, “She was nice to everybody, a very hard worker,
always eager to help and got along well with her co-workers.
Everyone’s just in shock and disbelief.”
A student at John D. O’Bryant High School in Roxbury, Santry had won
a scholarship for the trip by writing an essay.
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