A senior citizen who has had both of his legs amputated has disappeared after living in his wheelchair in the woods for four days.
Mervin Zinck and his wife were among the first people to notice the man in the woods of Pinehurst, N.S. last week.
They say they spotted a man in his late 60s, with both legs amputated, sitting in his wheelchair wrapped in a tarp in the woods near Bridgewater.
“It looked like a wheelbarrow with a cover on it and then I seen on Facebook that it was actually a man with a wheelchair,” says resident Meagan Slauenwhite.
Despite a steady stream of people coming by to offer help, the man sat there for four days.
“He was sitting here in the rain with nothing but a sheet of plastic over him,” says area resident Darlene Wile. “So we brought food and juice. We asked, was there anything we could do? Was he cold, was he hungry? He just kept saying, 'I'm fine, I'm fine.'”
RCMP say they have received dozens of calls about the man.
Zinck called police when he first learned of the situation Wednesday. He called again when he discovered the man was still sitting there, days later.
“He said, 'it's all looked after.' Well, I said, 'the guy is still sitting there,'” says Zinck.
“I just don't understand why the police couldn't have enforced something,” says Slauenwhite.
However, police say they simply can’t.
“When someone doesn't want our services and we don't believe they're any danger to themselves or to others, there's really no other involvement for us,” says Lunenburg County RCMP Sgt. Derek Smith.
The police did call social agencies who also tried to help.
“For whatever reason that he was, he opted not to take the hand that was extended to him,” says Capt. Felipe Vega of the Salvation Army.
After four days of living outdoors, the man finally asked the RCMP to drive him to Halifax Saturday night.
He asked to be dropped off at a hospital, which they did, but now no one knows where he is.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Kayla Hounsell
