Massachusetts State Police locate missing 84-year-old man in woods

At approximately 10:40 a.m. Tuesday, Troopers from the Massachusetts State Police Special Emergency Response Team located an 84-year-old man who had been missing in Hopkinton since Sunday night.

According to Massachusetts State Police, SERT members found Jim Noon lying in a wooded area a short distance from Icehouse Pond in the Berry Acres Conservation area off West Main Street in Hopkinton. Noon was conscious and alert and was transported to an area hospital for evaluation.

The rescue came on the third day of the search for Noon conducted by Hopkinton Police, Hopkinton Fire, a regional technical rescue team, and Massachusetts State Police Troopers, including MSP K9 Unit teams and SERT. Noon had last been seen around 10 PM on Sunday, Sept. 10, in the area of his residential building on West Main Street. Approximately 40 first responders from the various agencies participated in the search.

MSP SERT undertakes search and rescue and crowd control missions across the state in support of other MSP units and local and federal law enforcement agencies. The unit is trained and equipped to conduct missions in austere environments and areas with challenging terrain. SERT’s duties include missing persons searches; searches for evidence, often in large, open areas and austere environmental conditions; facility and infrastructure security missions; terrorism vulnerability assessments; and crowd control to ensure safety of large public gatherings. The unit prepares for its missions through intensive, continually updated training.

Thus far this year, MSP SERT Troopers have conducted 34 missing persons searches in cities and towns across Massachusetts, from Cape Cod to Mount Washington in the Berkshires. Five searches stretched over multiple days. In 2022, MSP SERT conducted 23 missing persons searches across the state, several of which lasted for multiple days.

MSP SERT also performs crowd control duties at large-scale civil disorder incidents or disturbances and is a component of security operations at large events. The unit’s duties also include searches for evidence at the request of major case investigators and have located critical items related to several ongoing homicide investigations in recent years.