A man reported missing in Rochester was found badly injured early Wednesday morning after an overnight search through nearly 400 acres of dense coastal woods in neighboring Mattapoisett, where a K-9 team traced him to a state reservation along Buzzards Bay. Rochester Police identified the missing man as Thomas Janicki in an August 5 press release, confirming that officers had received the initial missing person report before launching what became a sprawling regional search effort.
According to the Rochester Police Department, detectives used License Plate Reader technology alongside traditional investigative work to trace Janicki's vehicle to the area around Nasketucket Bay State Reservation, allowing search teams to narrow their focus rather than combing the entire town blindly. That break in the case, as reported by the New Bedford Guide, gave emergency personnel a defined perimeter within the reservation's rugged mix of forest, meadow, salt marsh, and rocky shoreline to search overnight.
Rochester borders Mattapoisett to the south, and the two towns share a coastal stretch of Plymouth County near Buzzards Bay that made the reservation a logical extension of the search once Janicki's vehicle was located nearby. Search crews worked through the night before locating him at approximately 10:17 a.m. Wednesday, per the same account from the New Bedford Guide. Mattapoisett Fire Rescue responded swiftly to his injuries on scene, according to a Facebook post from the Plymouth County Sheriff's Department, and then transported him to a local hospital. The New Bedford Guide reported that he was taken specifically to St. Luke's Hospital in New Bedford, a 293-bed acute care facility with a 24/7 Level II Trauma Center operated by Southcoast Health.
A Rookie K-9's First Major Find
The dog that tracked Janicki down was Pauly, a newly certified K-9 who had just completed the K-9 Academy and was paired with Lieutenant Joe Solari of the Plymouth County Sheriff's Department as his new partner, according to the sheriff's department's Facebook post. Solari and Pauly took part in the extensive missing person search in Rochester before the trail led them into Mattapoisett, where the sheriff's department says Pauly located a man experiencing a mental health crisis and suffering from severe injuries at Nasketucket Bay State Reservation.
Solari and Pauly worked alongside K-9 units from Raynham and Bridgewater during the search, the sheriff's department noted, reflecting how heavily the operation leaned on shared regional resources. The department credited multiple K-9 teams, SEMLEC, and other law enforcement partners with helping prevent what could have been a tragic outcome. Hoodline's prior coverage of the sheriff's department has previously highlighted K-9 outreach efforts, underscoring the department's continued investment in canine units.
Regional Assets Poured Into the Search
Beyond the K-9 teams, Rochester Police said the operation mobilized specialized regional assets including the Massachusetts State Police Air Wing, the SEMLEC Drone Unit, a SEMLEC Mobile Command Vehicle, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, and the Mattapoisett Harbormaster. That scale of response was possible in large part because of the Southeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, a mutual aid consortium of roughly 30 municipal police departments that lets member agencies share search-and-rescue, SWAT, K-9, and drone units rather than each town maintaining its own, according to SEMLEC.
The SEMLEC K-9 Unit operates under Unit Commander Sergeant Frank Pacheco of the Raynham Police Department and Control Chief Michael Assad of the Rochester Police Department, who oversee certified canine teams available for rapid deployment across member communities. The Plymouth County Sheriff's Department publicly thanked a long list of responding partners for the search, including the Rochester Police Department, Mattapoisett Police Department, Fairhaven Police Department, Bridgewater Police Department, Raynham Police, Massachusetts State Police, and the FBI.
Terrain That Tested Every Resource
Nasketucket Bay State Reservation spans nearly 400 acres of coastal forest, meadow, salt marsh, and rocky shoreline with five miles of public trails managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, according to the Buzzards Bay Coalition. That expanse of dense, varied terrain is exactly the kind of ground that pushes search teams toward canine tracking, since dogs like Pauly can follow a scent trail across marsh and woods where visual searches struggle after dark.
Pauly's success came just after completing the K-9 Academy, where dogs typically undergo 16 weeks of intensive training covering handler bonding, tracking, obedience, agility, and evidence recovery, per the Plymouth County Sheriff's Office. For a newly paired handler and dog, locating an injured man in severe distress within hours of an overnight deployment marked a significant first test of that training in the field.
