Posted on 02/27/2005 1:05:02 PM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
(CBS/AP) Florida investigators have released a picture of a man possibly connected to the disappearance of a 9-year-old girl.
He was photographed with two children at a Circle K convenience store hours after Jessica Marie Lunsford was last seen in her bedroom about a half-mile away.
The man is wearing a white tank top and black sweat pants -- and appears to be in his 20s.
Jessica's family has seen the surveillance tape and doesn't think the girl in the picture looks like her, but authorities want the public's help as they follow up on the possible lead.
The girl in the store picture wore a pink shirt and jeans. Jessica went to bed Wednesday night in a pink shirt and white shorts -- and her family tells authorities that none of her jeans was missing.
Hundreds of police and volunteers have turned out in pouring rain Sunday to search for Lunsford, who was last seen Wednesday night when her grandmother tucked her into bed. The next morning, her father discovered she was gone.
Authorities have few clues. Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy has said a door at the home was unlocked and one of Jessie's dolls was gone.
The clothes she had laid out for school were still in place, and none of her shoes were gone.
Police have scoured the wooded neighborhood around her house, but Dawsy said the girl's disappearance is not a confirmed abduction, and he hasn't ruled out anything.
As dawn broke Sunday, rain was falling across the region. Forecasts called for strong thunderstorms to drop as much as 2 inches by nightfall.
"The weather has not been beneficial to my investigation at all," Dawsy said.
The night after Jessie disappearance was reported, fog grounded a helicopter that would have searched the area with infrared radar.
Atlanta Braves pitcher Mike Hampton, a Homosassa native, and his wife Katia put up a $25,000 reward for Jessie's return.
Jessica lives in the house with her father and his parents.
She was last seen by her grandparents, before she went to bed Wednesday night. They said they put her to bed after she returned from a church function.
Her father told authorities he had returned Thursday morning from a girlfriend's home, coming in through the locked back door as he usually does, and was getting ready for work when he realized his daughter's alarm clock was sounding and she wasn't there.
Dawsy said Lunsford's story checked out.
Mark Lunsford said his daughter had had little contact with her mother, who Dawsy said had been in Ohio and was being interviewed by the FBI. Michael Brooks, an FBI spokesman in Cincinnati, would not comment on what the FBI discussed with Angela Bryant but said she had not been arrested or detained.
"I don't know where she is," Bryant, 31, of Morrow, Ohio, told The Associated Press in a tearful telephone interview Friday.
Bryant, who has remarried and has a 5-year-old son, added that she hadn't seen her daughter for four years. "Her dad didn't let me see her," she said.
They guy in the white tank top looks more like 16 or 17 to me.
Is it that warm in FL at 5am this time of year? Here in Phoenix we would probably have on at least a light sweater or sweatshirt at that hour of the day.
Could just be a family heading down to Florida for spring break, and driving thru the night stopping for a short break and gas. Her crossed arms could mean she's a little cold at that hour of the morning. At any rate, this is not the girl.
I think The girl is Jessica Lunsford !!And she looks like her to me.
3-11-05
who is the guy in the green shirt? sure resembles Couey...
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