Matt Fritchie, with the Martin County Sheriff's Office K-9 Unit, follows his dog, Bella, while looking for a suspected illegal immigrant at the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge on Jupiter Island on Tuesday. Photo by Sarah Grile.

JUPITER ISLAND — Martin County Sheriff’s deputies, Jupiter Island police and federal agents scoured parts of the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge looking for a man running from authorities.

At about 11:45 a.m., sheriff’s deputies and police responded to the north end of Beach Road where workers doing mosquito control reported seeing a suspicious man in the area, officials said. The witnesses reported to Jupiter Island Public Safety that when they approached the man on an all-terrain vehicle, he fled, according to sheriff’s office spokeswoman Rhonda Irons.

Initially, it was believed the man might have been a migrant crossing the ocean to get to U.S. soil, so crews from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection also arrived to the scene.

Crews searched the area but the man wasn’t found. Officials said this afternoon that no vessels are believed to have been involved in the incident.

The man is described to be about six feet tall with dark complexion and shoulder-length hair that might have been wet.

Tags: Jupiter Island police, Martin County Sheriff's Office, Rhonda Irons

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Hobe Sound, Jupiter Island, Martin County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.