[S]tate police searched Lake Champlain over the weekend for the body of a former New Jersey mayor facing prison time who went missing on Friday.
Brian Brady, 57, of Ringwood, New Jersey, was last seen around the Champlain Bridge in Addison, according to the Vermont State Police. That’s where troopers found a car Brady had rented, left abandoned at a park-and-ride about a quarter-mile from the bridge, according to a news release.
Brady, a former mayor of Sparta, New Jersey, and former police captain, was reported missing Thursday afternoon after family members called for a welfare check at his Smugglers’ Notch Resort condo. Troopers found no one in the home, state police said.
Investigators later learned Brady had rented a car in New Jersey on May 22 before driving to Vermont, police said.
According to the Rutland Herald and the New Jersey Herald, Brady had been awaiting re-sentencing on a 2014 conviction for using police databases to run illegal background checks. He had originally been sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation, the Rutland paper reported, but an appeals court judge ruled last August that he had been too leniently sentenced.
Brady was then the third highest–ranking officer of the New Jersey Human Services Police, the New Jersey paper reported.
State police scuba divers searched Lake Champlain on Friday and Saturday, assisted by authorities from New York, according to the news release. No remains had been found as of Saturday.
Keith Glover, a vice president at Smugglers’ Notch, said Brady was a longtime owner at the resort with a year-round condo. People there have been at a loss thinking what could have happened, he said.
“We’re concerned ourselves as to what’s going on,” Glover said.
VSP spokesperson Adam Silverman said he did not have any updates beyond the news release, but added, “we do not have any further water searches planned unless and until we develop new evidence.”
Troopers described Brady as a white man with brown hair and brown eyes, standing 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighing 200 pounds. Anyone with information is asked to call state police at 802-878-7111.
This story has been updated.
