Some sick individual(s) with a very poor sense of humor decided to create what appeared to be a person having fallen through the ice. Rescuers for the Androscoggin Sheriffs Department and the Maine Warden Service were called to the scene on Upper Range Pond by a report that someone had fallen through the ice.
Rescuers arrived on the scene with all their equipment and personnel, including air boats used for thin ice rescues. What they saw appeared to be tracks in about an inch of snow leading out toward the middle of the pond to a hole in the ice. It looked like there were no tracks leaving the area.
Once rescuers got on the ice, they discovered that someone had walked out on dangerously thin ice and cleared the snow to make it look like a hole in the ice, then retraced their footsteps making for what turned out to be an expensive bad prank. There’s always the possibility too that these same rescue crews could have been needed at a real emergency.
It is not clear who made the call to authorities and the Maine Warden Service and all law enforcement are warning people that ice is not safe in most places.
Tom Remington
