I don't know if this should be a separate thread, but I found these articles today. I hope everyone in the area is being EXTREMELY careful.
It's under 50 miles from Grand Forks ND to Fertile MN:
FERTILE, MINN.: Woman is injured in abduction attempt
Too early to say if related to Sjodin case, officials say
Herald Staff Writer
A young woman was abducted from a parking lot in Fertile, Minn., on Friday but managed to escape by leaping from a moving vehicle, authorities said.
She was taken to a nearby hospital for medical attention, but authorities would not comment on her age and the nature or extent of her injuries.
Authorities didn't know late Friday if the incident was related to the Nov. 22 abduction and disappearance of Dru Sjodin from Columbia Mall in Grand Forks, Polk County Sheriff Mark LeTexier said.
"We have no correlation ... (between the cases) because we are in the early stages," LeTexier said.
Lt. Dennis Eggebraaten, a lead detective in the Grand Forks Police Department involved in the Sjodin case, said Friday night his department will take a look at the Fertile situation.
Law enforcement learned of the Fertile abduction attempt from a 911 call that came from a Fertile residence at 7:36 p.m. Friday, LeTexier said.
The young woman had just closed the Hartz grocery store and was walking to her car when the abduction attempt occurred. Authorities said the abductor, believed to be an adult male, came up behind the woman and that she did not see him. LeTexier said he couldn't speak to whether a weapon was used, and no description of the vehicle was given.
With the investigation just begun Friday night, LeTexier said he didn't know how long the woman had been in the vehicle after she was taken, or how far the vehicle had traveled.
"The victim, at one point during the ride, opened the door and leaped from the vehicle," he said. "She got up and ran to a residence in Fertile, and someone called 911. And within minutes, the Polk County Sheriff's office arrived."
In addition to sheriff's officials, local police, the Minnesota State Patrol, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Department of Natural Resources and other agencies were in Fertile on Friday night investigating.
In light of the abduction attempt, LeTexier asked citizens to be vigilant.
"Just think about personal safety when the sun goes down, especially if you are female," he said. "Use the buddy system. Let people know where you are and where you're going. Just be safety conscious, is all we're asking."
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Chuck Haga, Star Tribune
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Published November 29, 2003
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DRU29
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GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- The teletype alert flashed through his office in Hallock, Minn., last weekend -- a young woman was missing and feared abducted in Grand Forks -- and Kittson County Sheriff Kenny Hultgren felt it in the pit of his stomach.
"Everything came flashing back about Julie," he said Friday. "With Dru, it's a cold, cruel reminder that this is something that'll be with us all our lives."
In Hallock and in Brainerd, Hibbing, Moose Lake and Cannon Falls, small Minnesota towns where communal heartbreak has a young face and a first name -- Julie, Erika, Katie, LeeAnna, Jessica -- the apparent abduction of 22-year-old Dru Sjodin a week ago today was a sharp stick poked into still healing wounds.
And tragedy nearly struck again Friday night in a case that is eerily similar to the Sjodin case.
In Fertile, Minn., about 50 miles southeast of Grand Forks, authorities said a girl leaving her job at a grocery store was forced into a car but managed almost immediately to escape.
Officers from the Minnesota State Patrol, area police departments and other agencies, many of whom had been working on Sjodin case, established a command center in Fertile.
Polk County Sheriff Mark LeTexier said the girl, whose name and age were not released, "was able to escape the vehicle and run to a Fertile residence" after the abduction attempt at about 7:30 p.m. Friday.
She was receiving medical attention "at a nearby medical facility," he said, but he wasn't sure of the extent of her injuries. She apparently was not able to give police a description of the man or the car, which sped away.
"She just ran," LeTexier said. "She didn't look back."
He said it's too early in the investigation to speak to any correlation between the Fertile case and the Sjodin case.
He said the attempted abduction, coming so soon after Sjodin's disappearance, is another blow to the region's sense of security.
"By morning, it's going to be reeling around here," he said. "But we have a lot of people converging on Fertile right now, and they know what they're doing. They'll be working 100 miles an hour on this."
A week ago today, Sjodin, a University of North Dakota senior from Pequot Lakes, Minn., was talking on her cell phone with her boyfriend in the Twin Cities when the call ended with a startled cry. She has not been seen since.
Eight agents from the FBI's Minneapolis office arrived in Grand Forks on Friday to help. They joined seven other agents and officers from two dozen local, state and federal agencies in a joint task force.
"This is a long-haul investigation," Grand Forks police Capt. Mike Kirby said.
Sjodin's father, Allan, said at a news conference Friday that the family has "100 percent faith that she's alive and out there," and he vowed to continue looking for her. "I will not be leaving Grand Forks until my daughter has been returned to me."
Family members wore buttons with Dru's picture and the words, "Come home, Dru Sjodin."
"It's not right without you here," said Janelle Sjodin, one of Dru's cousins. "I keep looking around for your face. We're going to get you. We're not giving up. We're not giving up ever."
Family members plan to pass out buttons today at the Columbia Mall, her last known location.
Allan Sjodin said he last spoke with his daughter about 12 days ago as she was driving from Park Rapids, Minn., to Grand Forks.
There had been "some questions" about a person making unwanted advances, he said, but she didn't appear to be fearful. "Not that I could tell," he said.
As time goes on
Hultgren was a deputy sheriff in July 1998 when Julie Holmquist, 16, disappeared while roller-blading on a country road near Hallock.
Her body was found in an abandoned gravel pit about three weeks later. In January, more than four years later, police were closing in on the man they believe killed her when he committed suicide.
"The longer the investigation goes on, as we found out, the harder it is to hold onto hope," Hultgren said. "In our case, the end result wasn't good. But you have to hold onto hope, and I know that's what they're doing with Dru."
Dave Bjerga, special agent in charge of northern Minnesota for the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and a veteran of the earlier abductions, spent Thanksgiving Day counseling Grand Forks police and other officers that "there will be ups and downs."
He passed along tips that investigators had gleaned from working the Holmquist case and others: Katie Poirier, 19, abducted from a Moose Lake convenience store and killed in 1999; Erika Dalquist, 21, not seen since she left a downtown Brainerd bar on Oct. 30, 2002; LeeAnna Warner, 5, who vanished in June after walking to a friend's house in Chisholm, and Jessica Swanson, 3, who disappeared from her home in Cannon Falls in 1995.
Investigators didn't find Jessica's body until 1999, after her mother's boyfriend confessed to the killing. Donald Blom was sentenced to life in 2000 for kidnapping and killing Poirier.
"We try to learn from each one so we don't commit the same mistakes," Bjerga said. "We're getting better each time, getting up to speed as quickly as possible."
More than 40 officers worked on the Sjodin case on Thanksgiving Day.
"They're finding that things in our own personal lives are secondary right now," Bjerga said. "When you're not at the command center, your mind still can't get away. Every time the cell phone rings, you think that might be the call. You're so focused, it becomes your life."
'What do we do now?'
In Goodhue County, authorities marked time on a wall calendar the first few days after Jessica's disappearance, then tore it down. "It just added to the frustration," Sheriff Dean Albers said earlier this year, commiserating with investigators in northern Minnesota searching for LeeAnna, who is still missing.
In Brainerd, Erika Dalquist's parents have gone with police and sheriff's deputies to watch farm ponds being drained, volunteers combing through woods and brush, and divers searching deep mine pits.
A suspect led police to one mine pit and, according to charging papers, indicated that they might find her body there. They didn't, and the charges eventually were dropped. The investigation is now in its second year.
Hultgren knows Allan Sjodin, who lived in nearby Karlstad, Minn., before moving to the Twin Cities.
"I'm sure he's overwhelmed right now," he said. "I haven't talked with him, but we're all hoping and praying for the Sjodin family."
Hultgren said that officers try to think about cases that ended well. Earlier this year, an Amber Alert went out for a 13-year-old girl reported missing after going for a run along rural roads in Marshall County, but she was found safe the next day.
"I spoke with my two daughters on Thursday," Hultgren said. "The older one was a classmate of Julie's, and they were good friends. Again, they have a lot of questions: 'What do we do now? We thought this was a safe area. What do we do now?' "
Chuck Haga is at crhaga@startribune.com .