LAWRENCE — Four members of the Police Department's special operations unit spent five hours in Lynn on Wednesday afternoon helping to search for a missing 5-year-old boy.
Capt. Roy Vasque, Detective Sgt. Mark Ciccarelli, and Detectives David Moynihan and Dean Murphy were working on a drug investigation with state troopers assigned to the Lawrence Drug Task Force when they were notified they were being reassigned to search for missing Giovanni Gonzalez.
Moynihan said the Lawrence officers told their state trooper counterparts that if they needed more manpower for the search, "to let us know."
"I was asked to go and I said sure," Moynihan said.
He said he was assigned to a team that searched the High Rock Park area, about a mile from the boy's father's home. His father, Ernesto Gonzalez Jr., 36, is being held in jail on a child endangerment charge.
Gonzalez took his son for a custody visit Friday and when the boy's mother went to Gonzalez's apartment to get little Giovanni, the boy was not there, and he has not been seen since.
Vasque, Ciccarelli and Murphy also were assigned to teams that searched vacant buildings, canvassed neighborhoods and spoke to neighbors and people on the street, Moynihan said.
"We knew they were reaching out for help so we decided to go,'' Moynihan said, adding that their trip to Lynn was cleared through local police supervisors.
Giovanni is described as 4 feet 2 inches tall, weighing about 40 pounds, and was last seen wearing blue jeans, a red shirt and Spider-Man sandals.
