Collins

OARK, ARK. — The Johnson County (Arkansas) Sheriff’s Office has recovered an abandoned 2012 Mini Cooper linked to missing 22-year-old Garwin man Nicholas Collins, according to media reports in both Iowa and Arkansas.

Collins was last heard from on Dec. 19, when he left a note saying he was “going away for a while” and left his home in Garwin for Gladbrook in the aforementioned Mini Cooper. An automatic license plate reader last located the vehicle in southern Missouri before the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) in Arkansas received a call about it on Thursday morning and found it with no license plate in the Ozark National Forest region.

Search and rescue teams joined deputies on Thursday to begin looking for Collins in both Johnson and Newton counties, and he was not located. As this issue went to press, the search continued into Friday.

“I have been in direct contact with Sheriff (Tom) Hughes, and he has taken all necessary steps to gather resources and deploy them in the search. Our agencies have been communicating and working together as this investigation is still ongoing to ensure we are on the same page and coordinating every effort,” Tama County Sheriff Casey Schmidt wrote in a press release.