SUNLAND : Police Seek Help in Finding Missing Man

Police have put out appeals for help in locating a Sunland man who wandered off during a family picnic in Santa Monica last month.

“He could be anywhere along the beach between here and Malibu,” said Sgt. Gary Gallinot, spokesman for the Santa Monica Police Department. He said Bill Burke, 44, who is schizophrenic and speaks incoherently, disappeared June 19 from a family picnic at the beach in Santa Monica.

Gallinot said police have checked local shelters and day-centers for the homeless without result. A notice listing Burke as a missing person has been issued to police statewide, Gallinot said.

“I’m frantic,” said Betty Province, Burke’s sister with whom he lives in Sunland.

Burke is a Vietnam-era U.S. Navy veteran who left the service in the mid-1970s, and had once been under treatment for schizophrenia at the Sepulveda Veterans Administration Medical Center, said his cousin, Adrienne Burke, also of Sunland. A poster the family has been distributing in Santa Monica describes him as having “bizarre mannerisms at times, but very quiet.”

Medication for his illness had been ineffective, and Burke has wandered off three times since the early 1980s, once for several days, but this is the longest he has been missing, his cousin said. Burke is also legally blind without his glasses, which he was not wearing when he disappeared, his cousin said.

Police described Burke as white, 6-feet 1-inch tall, with gray hair, beard, a mustache and blue eyes. He was wearing black pants with a white polo shirt and brown shoes when he disappeared.