11 July, Vitebsk /Olga Bogacheva - BELTA/. An 87-year-old deaf-mute resident of Beshenkovichi District spent a week in the forest, the information and public relations department of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee's Internal Affairs Directorate informed BELTA correspondent. His niece reported the two-day absence of the elderly relative from the village of Sorzhitsa to the District Department of Internal Affairs (ROVD). The search for the missing person was complicated by his general physical condition: the elderly deaf-mute man was also visually impaired. Internal Affairs Department officers, together with local residents, searched the area near the village but could not find him. On the fifth day of the search, the department's management requested assistance from the DOSAAF training centre, located in the village of Peschanka in the neighbouring Vitebsk District, asking for a helicopter to search for the pensioner. A MI-2 helicopter, piloted by experienced instructor Vladimir Shestakov with two officers from the Beshenkovichi ROVD, Police Major Anatoly Alshevsky and Police Captain Sergey Petrashko, hovered over the presumed location of the missing person for several hours. The elderly man was found in the forest near the Vitebsk-Beshenkovichi highway. Due to general weakness, dehydration, and hypothermia, he was unable to move and was lying in the grass. The man was lifted aboard the helicopter and, in the area of Budilovo village, handed over to medics from the Beshenkovichi Central District Hospital. His current health condition is satisfactory. -0-

BELTA