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Full-force hunt for Eric Frein near his home in Canadensis comes up empty

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An intensified police search for Eric Matthew Frein in the Canadensis area Thursday night was called off after about three hours.

A state trooper told a gathering of reporters along Route 390 at 9:45 p.m. that roadblocks had been lifted and state police will scale back the hunt for the night and resume in full force Friday. He said the search Thursday night was just one phase of a regional dragnet.

“We have been out en masse not only here in Monroe County but also in Pike County,” he said, adding no homes were evacuated in the Canadensis area.

Police will continue to put all of their resources into finding Frein, the trooper said.

He told the reporters he wasn’t in Canadensis when the search started about 6:30 p.m. but arrived later. He had been at the funeral in Scranton for Cpl. Bryon Dickson, the trooper Frein is accused of gunning down last week outside the state police barracks at Blooming Grove, Pike County.

The trooper said he only heard that there was a possible sighting of Frein, but didn’t know the details of exactly what prompted the shutdown of roads all around Canadensis, a section of Barrett Township, Monroe County.

Earlier in the night, police and paramedics set up a staging area near Frein’s Canadensis home and put up roadblocks keeping most traffic about a mile away.

Local and national news media gathered next to the Canadensis United Methodist Church, awaiting word on the search for the self-styled survivalist who police say ambushed Dickson and critically wounded another trooper.

A Frein sighting report Wednesday brought state police to East Stroudsburg, where they searched a home and found no sign of him.

Frein is the only suspect in the ambush, which happened about 10:50 p.m. last Friday. Trooper Alex Douglass was also shot and remains hospitalized.

Frein, 31, is a war re-enactor who has expressed hostility to law enforcement officers, according to authorities. The FBI on Thursday put him on its “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list.