Volunteers Search for Missing Girl (all day. No leads yet. Police frustrated.)

AP ^ | 6/6/02 | staff

[ppaul]

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Hundreds of volunteer searchers fanned out Thursday morning, responding to a plea for help from a desperate father of a 14-year-old girl who authorities say was abducted from her bedroom. Frustrated police said they had no good leads.

Police with tracking dogs, helicopters and a new statewide emergency alert system searched for Elizabeth Smart, who vanished early Wednesday.

SALT LAKE CITY, 6-JUN-2002: 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted early June 5 from
her bedroom in Salt Lake City, Utah, at gunpoint by an unknown intruder.

Police turned their focus toward following up on thousands of tips about her disappearance, but "a lot of things have not panned out," Police Chief Rick Dinse said late Thursday morning. "We don't feel we're any closer (to solving the case),"

As for suspects: "Nobody's been eliminated," he said.

A crowd of about 400 volunteers formed a long line to check in at a search command center at the Shriners Hospital for Children in the wealthy Federal Heights neighborhood, where the family lives.

Organizers said so many people showed up that they ran out of forms for searchers to sign. Teams of volunteers headed out to comb the surrounding neighborhoods and the Wasatch Mountain foothills.

A $250,000 reward for her safe return was offered. The reward was initially $10,000, but donations from the community boosted the fund, Dinse said.

Elizabeth's parents went on national TV networks Thursday to renew their plea for their daughter's return.

"This person, whoever he is, I don't think he knows what he's doing," Elizabeth's father, Edward, said on NBC's "Today" show. "She's just the sweetheart in our family and we just want her back."

Police believe the intruder forced open a window somewhere in the house -- though not in the bedroom where the girl and her 9-year-old sister slept -- at about 1 a.m. Wednesday. The parents and other children also were home and sleeping. The family has six children in all.

The assailant was described as white with dark hair and wearing a tan denim-type jacket and a white baseball cap. He is about 5 foot 8 inches tall and was soft-spoken, the sister told police.

Police said he brandished a small, black handgun and told the younger girl her sister would be harmed if the alarm was raised. Elizabeth was wearing red pajamas, and the man let her take a pair of shoes, police said.

No ransom demand had been received as of Thursday morning, police said.

The assailant didn't call the victim by name, and he didn't appear to know his way around the house, the sister told police. No neighbors reported anything suspicious.

Because of the man's threat, the younger girl waited several hours before alerting her parents, which would have given the abductor time to get well away from the area, police spokesman Dwayne Baird said.

"He could be in the Midwest, he could be Los Angeles or San Francisco," Baird said. "Sometimes they take them around the corner of the house, sometimes they take them overseas."

Police were investigating recently paroled sex offenders and contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. A $10,000 reward was announced by Mayor Rocky Anderson.

"If the perpetrator is watching, we want him to know that he will be brought to justice. But that certainly he will fare better if he will demonstrate some semblance of compassion and return this young girl to her family," Anderson said.

The Smarts' home is for sale, listed for $1.19 million, and police were trying to interview potential buyers or contractors who may have had recent access to the house.

Baird said investigators were trying to determine whether any neighbors had surveillance cameras that might have caught anything on videotape. Officers also searched the family's computer to see if Elizabeth had had contact with any strangers online, but her father said she doesn't use the Internet.

"This was not a purely random act. He'd have to know that she lived there," said Wes Galloway, victims' advocate for Salt Lake City police.

On Wednesday, the search expanded hour by hour and by evening was considered a nationwide search.

Edward Smart said a neighboring family had been the target of a foiled kidnapping plot 10 years ago, so he ran to their home and told the parents, "Please go check your children."

The blond girl, who graduated from middle school Tuesday, is 5-foot, 6-inches tall and weighs about 105 pounds. Friends described her as sweet and shy and said she was an accomplished harp player and a good athlete. About 350 people attended a prayer vigil for her Wednesday night.

Elizabeth's disappearance was the first use of Utah's Emergency Alert System. It was created in April to quickly broadcast information about an abducted child.

Link to article HERE.

[ppaul]

Because of the man's threat, the younger girl waited several hours before alerting her parents, which would have given the abductor time to get well away from the area, police spokesman Dwayne Baird said.

This horrifying tragedy underscrores the need for trainig children on what do do in such situations. Scream, scream, scream: "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" repeatedly, at the top of your lungs.

These parents must be heartbroken, grief-struck. Let's remember them in our prayers.
And, let's keep an eye out for Elizabeth Smart.

[veronica]

Horrifying case. And the poor little sister was too scared to tell the parents about the abduction for 2 hours. I hope they find her safe, and the perp gets his just desserts.

[glc1173@aol.com]

This girl's teenage sister reported a markedly-different version of a "forced" entry through a bedroom window than the police did.

Anyone yet wondering if this is the start of something like that 5-year-old beauty queen's "abduction?"

[MAWG]

What a beautiful girl and what a terrible tragedy. If this is a stranger abduction as it appears to be, that is not good. He is likely to be a sexual predator who has seen Elizabeth before and fantasized about her. I hope and pray that this is not the case.

[Aria]

The poor little sister - she will feel guilty forever.

[Husker24]

Wasnt there an earlier thread that this guy was killed in a police shoot out and the girl escaped.

[ican'tbelieveit]

That is a different girl/abduction/state.

[KissOfTheSith]

>Anyone yet wondering if this is the start of something like that 5-year-old beauty queen's "abduction?"

1) If it's all on the up and up, then this must be the most horrible thing a parent could endure.

2) Perverts who prey on children, however, strike me as the lowest, most cowardly scum on the planet. It's hard to picture such a person breaking into a house with the parents home and then taking one daughter and trusting that the other daughter would be so scared that she wouldn't immediately wake the parents.

3) I haven't followed the details of the case, but I hope the police, unlike the Jon Benet case, searched the house completely.

4) In three high profile cases, however, searches have been meaningless.

• A couple of years ago, when that mother killed her children by putting them in her car and then driving the car into the little pond near her house, the police searched the small pond and found nothing. Then, just a week or so later, the woman took the police to the pond and they found the car right at the end of the ramp.
  
  
• When Chanda Levy went missing, the police searched that park, and they knew she had asked for info on that K. mansion, so they had reason to search the park carefully. Still, Levy's body was found in the park.
  
  
• That poor little kid was reported as missing from the pool party. Many dozens of police hung out around the pool, and it was specifically searched. Yet a few days later the body of the missing boy was found at the bottom of the pool.

-- KotS

[newgeezer]

This girl's teenage sister reported a markedly-different version of a "forced" entry through a bedroom window than the police did.

Really? Please explain.

[ppaul]

Please explain

Yeah.
Please do.

[buffyt]

How horrible, I have a 19 year old daughter, I would be devastated! I can understand why the younger girl panicked and out of fear waited several hours before she told her folks about the scary intruder. (although it is too bad she didn't scream FIRE!) I shuddered with fear just reading about it. Every females worst nightmare, finding a strange man in your bedroom at night. My heart goes out to this poor family!!! I have told my kids that if anyone tries to abduct them to scream fight yell NO! or FIRE! or HELP! Just never go with a stranger even if he has a gun! Once he has you away from your safe situation, he is free to do whatever he wants to do to you. Scary world.

[MinuteGal]

The perp had a gun. So the victim starts screaming "Fire!", or "Help". The parents come running. He shoots everyone in sight.

Maybe that's what went through the minds of these two little girls.

Leni

[ppaul]

Have children scream, "FIRE!"
It disorients the attacker.
And, a lot of times, especially in cities, nobody responds when they hear "HELP!"
But when folks hear someone screaming "FIRE!" - they come a runnin'.

[ppaul]

The perp had a gun. So the victim starts screaming "Fire!", or "Help". The parents come running. He shoots everyone in sight.

Statistically, that almost never happens.And, any cop will tell you, you are better off screaming and trying to get away.
Even if the perp does shoot, which statistically does not happen often, he will usually miss.
The worst thing you can do is not resist and allow the perp to take you to another place where he will probably kill you.

[archy]

4) In three high profile cases, however, searches have been meaningless.

A couple of years ago, when that mother killed her children by putting them in her car and then driving the car into the little pond near her house, the police searched the small pond and found nothing. Then, just a week or so later, the woman took the police to the pond and they found the car right at the end of the ramp.

That was in 1994 that Susan Smith drowned her sons Michael and Alex in John D. Long Lake; I was a member of one of the K9 search and rescue teams on standby to respond to that area and cover the dozens of lakes in the region. Instead I was called to the scene of an airplane crash in Northern Indiana on Halloween night, and, as it turned out, wasn't needed for the South Carolina operation.

But there was a postscript to the Smith case: two years later a van with seven persons in it went down that same ramp while visiting the memorial to the Smith children, and three adults and four children drowned. Tragedy followed atrocity, and that community took another blow it didn't deserve.

But although I've been involved in over a thousand searches since I began working with K9 search teams in 1977, and have had many more with negative results than the 12 lives saved and several dozen bodies recovered that the four gifted dogs I have been priviliged to work with have located, I've never thought any of those efforts were *meaningless.* Sometimes they provide training and stimulation for the dogs that proves useful on another later search; sometimes we discover limitations or failures of equipment that can be improved or replaced before it's critically required in a life-or-death situation; and sometimes, we're just a part of an overall effort for some family that wants everything possible to locate someone for whom they care and may neverv return to them.

That's not going to be an easy search in Utah, and I suspect not one that offers quick results; we shall see. But even if Elizabeth Smart is not located in the vicinity the attempt to do so will not be a *nmeaningless* one, though it may indeed be fruitless.

Officials search through thick scrub oak in the foothills below the neighborhood where14-year-old Elizabeth Smart apparently was kidnapped at gunpoint from her home, Wednesday, June 5, 2002, in Salt Lake City. Smart's home is not shown here. Elizabeth Smart was taken about 2 a.m. when a man forced his way through a window in her Federal Heights home, police said. Her parents were asleep in their bedroom at the time. The neighborhood abuts the University of Utah.

(AP Photo/Steve C. Wilson)

[Utah Girl]

Source? Elizabeth Smart doesn't have a teenaged sister, her only sister is nine years old. And the police are keeping a lid on the information about how the perp entered the home. Plus, no interviews from any family member on TV, except the distraught father.

[dalebert]

I am praying they find this girl. Lets keep this thread bumped.

[IamHD]

Oh my, this is such a terrible tragedy. What a beautiful little girl. I think that we all know what the outcome is going to be, unfortunately. My heart and prayers go out to this family. :(

[freedox]

I have a question. On another thread, it was pointed out that although the younger sister was able to describe the perp's hair, clothing, manner of speech and what his gun looked like, no composite drawing has been released. I heard one of the LEOs state on Fox News that they did not think a composite of the perp would be useful at this time. To anyone who has knowledge of such things......might this be an indication that the LEOs suspect that the alleged perp does not actually exist?

[geege]

How can you live in a million dollar home with no alarm system.....dogs.....gates???? Why...because it's Utah....Shegraladeeda Valley.......