This is a very sad story featuring a 14-year-old who is no longer with us, but I nevertheless feel it my duty to inform you that someone named Winters has frozen to death.
Emotions came to the fore Thursday at the inquiry into Newfoundland and Labrador’s search and rescue system, when a representative of the Department of National Defence and the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre apologized to the family of a teenager who froze to death on sea ice in 2012 before crews could find him.
“If it was my one of my children missing, I would have wanted 10 helicopters in there,” Lt.-Col. James Marshall told the family of Burton Winters, 14, during a hearing in the boy’s hometown of Makkovik, an Inuit community on Labrador’s northern coast.
“And I’m sorry that didn’t happen.”Winters left his grandmother’s house on a snowmobile at about 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2012. A search started early that evening. His body was found on Feb. 1 on sea ice. His family and people in the community believe he may have been on a trail, missed a turn and headed accidentally to sea.