Late Tuesday morning, after a day-long search, an elderly man who had been missing since Monday from his 162 Hattertown Road home was found uninjured, sleeping a farm field off Head O'Meadow Road.

The search for Martin Lee Allen, 71, of 162 Hattertown Road had been underway since police learned at 12:47 pm on Monday that he was missing.

Mr Allen had last been seen at his home about four hours before he was reported as missing.

Police said that Mr Allen was "disoriented" and thirsty when he was found at about 11:15 am on Tuesday.

Police Sergeant Aaron Bahamonde said that police had asked town highway department workers to drive through the area looking for Mr Allen from the high vantage point that their large trucks provide.

Two highway staffers -- Andrew White and Buddy Ingram -- who were riding in the same truck entered eastbound Head O' Meadow Road from Sugar Street and drove about 100 yards when they looked to the north and spotted what at first appeared to be a large boulder in a field.

After checking the object, the two men discovered that the "boulder," which was about 150 yards off the roadway, actually was Mr Allen who was asleep, Sgt Bahamonde said.

The sergeant credited the highway staffers for their work in finding the missing man, saying that they saved his life by locating him.

A Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps crew transported Mr Allen to the nearby Ferris Acres Creamery parking lot at 144 Sugar Street (Route 302) where he was checked by the ambulance staff. He was then transported to Danbury Hospital to be further assessed.

On Tuesday morning before Mr Allen was located, police called for search help from the Dodgingtown Volunteer Fire Company and the volunteer Community Emergency Response Team (CERT). CERT members had aided with the search on Monday night.

Police with tracking dogs on Tuesday morning moved through wide areas of the Route 302 corridor, searching for any trace of Mr Allen.

Three Code Red alert messages about the missing man, which the town trasnmitted to local telephone numbers, produced several separate  reports of a man fitting Mr Allen’s description having been seen on Monday at Ferris Acres Creamery.

Those tips provided police with a place to start searching for Mr Allen, Sgt Bahamonde said. Police used the parking lot near the dairy bar as a staging area for their dog searches of the Route 302 corridor.

On Monday night, police had called in the Eagle One police helicopter for aid in searching for Mr Allen. The aircraft is equipped with searchlights for nighttime searches.

Before Mr Allen was found, Police Chief Michael Kehoe likened the search for the missing man to “like finding a needle in a haystack.”

There are many possibilities as to where Mr Allen might be, Chief Kehoe had then said.

Sgt  Bahamonde said that Mr Allen does not have a history of wandering away from home. “This is definitely out of the ordinary” in terms of the man’s behavior, Sgt Bahamonde said.

Police used six tracking dogs overall in the search, he said.

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Content modified at 3:33 pm on 8/12/14.