Oxford Exchange Club's Officer of the Month Tracked Missing Man with Dementia to East Texas

By Rick Hynum
hottytoddy.com contributor

Some top-notch detective work by Oxford Police Department’s Officer Patrick Fugitt recently helped authorities track down a missing Hermitage Gardens resident with dementia—and the trail led all the way to a tiny hamlet in eastern Texas.

For his expert sleuthing, the Exchange Club of Oxford has honored Fugitt as its Officer of the Month for June 2018. The organization presented the award to Fugitt during its Thursday, July 19 meeting at the Inn at Ole Miss.
According to OPD, Fugitt responded to a missing-persons report at Hermitage Gardens and learned that the elderly male resident had left the facility with an unidentified man. A family member was able to pinpoint the location of the missing man’s smartphone, which yielded the first clues to his whereabouts.
When GPS tracking found the man’s phone at a Shell station in Bogata, Texas, a small town of 1,153 people, Fugitt acted quickly, placing a call to the Bogata Police Department so they could dispatch officers to the location. Fugitt then telephoned the Shell station and asked the cashier to stall the missing man and his companion. Bogata police arrived in time to detain the two men and arranged for the missing man’s return to Oxford.
“Although the intentions of the unidentified male are unclear, if not for the quick thinking and hard work put forth by Officer Fugitt to resolve this situation, we would not have been able to return this elderly male back to his family,” noted OPD’s Shane Fortner, who nominated Fugitt for the Exchange Club award.
Fugitt is a native of Booneville and father of a four-year-old child. He previously worked as a police officer in Chattanooga, Tenn., before moving to Oxford to be closer to home. He said OPD is “a good place to work.”
“They took me in like family, and I’m very proud to be here,” he said.
The Exchange Club of Oxford is one of Oxford’s leading service organizations, with a focus on prevention of child abuse, Americanism, community service and youth programs. Among its many projects, the nonprofit supports the Exchange Club Family Center in Oxford, which works to improve the quality of life for at-risk families by breaking the cycle of child abuse and neglect through prevention, intervention and educational services.

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