UPDATE: Rochester police ask public to search downtown properties for missing man
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(ABC 6 News) – UPDATE: Rochester police have asked residents living between St. Marys hospital, Civic Center Drive, and 11th Avenue in downtown Rochester to check their properties for missing man Thomas McElroy.
Capt. Casey Moilanen said McElroy is about 5’8″, 150 pounds, and has fair skin, black hair, and a beard and mustache. McElroy also has a tattoo on his left hand.
Moilanen said an RPD investigator was assigned to McElroy’s case as soon as he was reported missing, and police asked the public for help in the search Thursday because elements of the investigation like search warrants and subpoenas had not yet come through.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is also involved in the case.
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(ABC 6 News) – 43-year-old Thomas McElroy was last seen leaving St. Marys Hospital around 4:30 in the morning on December 27.
From there the McElroy family doesn’t know where he went.
Thomas McElroy (Credit: Rochester Police Department)
“From what we hear from police, surveillance cameras have picked him up going north on 11th Avenue,” said Thomas’ sister Tracy Tschumper.
McElroy’s parents say he was last seen wearing shoes, pants, and had no shirt but had a blanket wrapped around him. And now they are doing everything they can to find their son.
“We personally, the three of us have looked on foot going that way. Asking businesses all the way down to Walgreens,” said Tschumper.
Rochester police are also helping with the investigation.
Cell phone data pinged his last location to the hospital. His friends and girlfriend haven’t been able to reach him either.
Which they all say is unlike him.
“He’s not suicidal, he has no reason to hide, there’s no reason he wouldn’t contact his girlfriend or his closest friends,” said Tschumper.
“My biggest fear is that he went looking for shelter, you know under someone’s deck or in someone’s shed along 11th Ave. there. So, we would really hope that people would check to make sure nothing like that has happened,” said Thomas’ mother Candace McElroy.