Staff photos / Ed Runyan Cadaver dog Jackpot with his handler, Sgt. Steven Lindow of the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office, and two volunteers from the Ohio Branch K9 Search Team of Trumbull County on Wednesday search a backyard of a home on Jackson Street on Youngstown’s East Side. They were searching an area near where the car of Liberty woman Lori A. Boffman was found in 2006. Boffman disappeared, and investigators are investigating her as a cold case.

YOUNGSTOWN — Police investigators from Youngstown and Liberty along with cadaver dogs from two agencies and officers using drones scoured an East Side neighborhood Wednesday looking for evidence in the 2006 disappearance of a Liberty woman.

Lori A. Boffman, 45, of Holly Drive, is the mother of three who left her purse, medicine and identification at home before she was last seen about 6:30 p.m. Aug. 5, 2006, by a person in a car with her who said Boffman was driving erratically. The passenger asked to be let out of the vehicle.

Boffman’s car was found early the next day in a driveway between two homes on North Jackson Street near Oak Street on Youngstown’s East Side. The light blue 1992 Mercury Sable station wagon apparently had been driven through a couple of rear yards nearby before it ended up in the driveway still running.

Boffman was not in the car and has not been seen since.

Four cadaver dogs searched the area around the location where the car was found, in shifts of about 15 minutes each.

Youngstown police Sgt. Dave Sweeney said the effort was “considered a pretty, solid successful day, although we didn’t hit on any remains. But the group worked well together.”

Sweeney said new information has come to investigators since an article in early April in The Vindicator detailed the effort to investigate Boffman’s disappearance. The new information led investigators to the location near where the car was found.

Other agencies assisted, including an investigator with the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office, one from the State Fire Marshal’s Office and a researcher for the Youngstown Police Department who has compiled information generated in the case.

Lincoln Park nearby also was searched, and the group still has another location or two to check, Sweeney said.

Jackpot, a cadaver dog with the sheriff’s office, and his handler, along with three other cadaver dogs from the volunteer Ohio Branch K9 Search Team from Trumbull County were the main engine for the effort.

The K9 search team deployed GPS technology to track the areas where each dog searched to ensure the target area was searched without gaps, and a drone hovered high above the cadaver dogs to record the search effort.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Liberty Police Department at 330-759-1511 or Youngstown Police Department at 330-742-8911.

Have an interesting story? Email Ed Runyan at erunyan@vindy.com.