The search for actor Julian Sands, who vanished five months ago on a hike in Southern California, will “continue in a limited capacity,” authorities said Monday after renewed attempts over the weekend yielded nothing.
“Saturday’s search included over 80 Search and Rescue volunteers, deputies, and staff,” the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department wrote in its announcement this week. “Their efforts were supported by two helicopters, and drone crews,” it added, while also tweeting out footage of helicopters taking off to find Sands.
The sheriff’s department has conducted eight separate searches to locate the English actor this year, but all have come up empty-handed, according to the statement. After more than 500 hours of searching in total, the sheriff’s department said its efforts are now being curtailed. The missing person case for Sands “remains active,” however.
The “Room With a View” star was first reported missing in January, but inclement weather impeded search efforts in the following months. Monday’s statement noted that parts of the Mount Baldy area, where the 65-year-old went missing, are still covered in “10 plus feet of ice and snow.”
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The department promised in February to “bring closure” to members of Sands’ family, who previously thanked the “heroic search teams.”
“He has not yet been declared missing, presumed dead, but I know in my heart that he has gone,” brother Nick Sands told England’s Craven Herald & Pioneer newspaper shortly after the actor’s disappearance. “However sibling rivalry being what it is, it would be just like him to walk out of there and prove me wrong.”
Best friend and frequent collaborator John Malkovich has described Julian Sands as an experienced hiker who took pleasure in solo expeditions.
“I suppose the particular conditions on the ground that day on Mount Baldy must have led to some sort of catastrophic and immediate error that was irreversible,” Malkovich told the Guardian in February. “But he knew what the conditions were, and that’s what he loved to do. He found great solace in the solitude of that.”
Search teams conducted more than a dozen rescue missions this past winter to aid various hikers on and around Mount Baldy, the sheriff’s department said in January. One of them fell 50 feet and survived, while another — a mother of four — fell 500 feet to her death right before Sands disappeared, according to KCAL News in Los Angeles.
The sheriff’s department has since worked with legislators on developing a stringent permitting process for hiking in the area.
Monday’s statement urged anyone with potentially useful information about Sands to call Detective B. Meelker at (909) 356-6710.