Search resumes for Utah soldier missing in desert

Search resumes for Utah soldier missing in desert
BY LYNN DEBRUIN
The Associated Press
Jun 11, 2011 11:19PM
Kevin Bushling marked his oldest son’s 27th birthday last week at home, curtains closed, reflecting on happier times. Now he’s bracing for a Father’s Day spent believing both his boys are dead — the youngest by suicide last year and the other, an Army soldier, missing for more than a month in the remote Utah desert.

Authorities were planning to search again Sunday for Army Spc. Joseph Bushling, who disappeared May 8 from the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground after telephoning a fellow soldier to tell him he was out of gas, cold and walking without shoes, according to a sheriff’s document.

The Dugway site was established in 1942 to study chemical and biological warfare and covers nearly 800,000 acres in the desert along the Nevada border. About 850 people live on the isolated base.

Bushling’s father fears the worst — that his son died of exposure or possibly that he stumbled upon unexploded munitions or even mustard gas. He fears the Army may be hiding something. Dugway officials deny any such assertion.

“I am glad they are still searching,” Kevin Bushling said from his home in Russellville, Ark. He said he was shocked to learn several weeks ago that the search had been called off but is pleased with the resumption.
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Search resumes for Utah soldier missing in desert