ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO — The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office issued a silver alert on the afternoon of February 27 for William "Neil" McCasland, a 68-year-old retired U.S. Air Force major general who walked out of his Albuquerque, New Mexico, home earlier that day. Nothing has been seen or heard from McCasland since.

McCasland left his house between 10 and 11 a.m. on February 27, leaving his phone and glasses behind and taking his .38 revolver. He is believed to have departed on foot. His wife discovered he was missing soon after midday.

McCasland formerly commanded the Phillips Research Site and Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, a facility that focuses on space vehicles and directed-energy technologies. Kirtland Air Force Base is located in Albuquerque, in the same city where McCasland went missing.

Addressing speculation surrounding the disappearance, Lieutenant Kyle Woods of the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office said investigators were limiting their work to verified information. "I appreciate that there's a community that wants to go down the rabbit hole of UFOs. I don't have a way with which to pursue that and so those theories have to be set aside unless we were to find something that would have indicated that. So we can only go off the facts," Woods said.

The silver alert, a notification system used when a person with a cognitive impairment or other vulnerability goes missing, was issued after McCasland's wife reported him absent. Authorities have not announced any update to the search as of the time of publication.