Andrea Kolarik, a cashier at a Texaco Food Mart on the northwest side of Lincoln, Neb. told the Deseret News she saw a van filled with three men and a blond girl, who appeared to be between 12 and 14 years old, pull into her gas station about 11 a.m.
The girl, who Kolarik said "possibly could be" Elizabeth, was looking out the window at Kolarik, her manager and a customer inside the store.
"She gave us a look like something was wrong," Kolarik said. "She was just crying. She had her hands over her face . . . She looked scared and exhausted."
The customer inside the store then called police. Before officers arrived, one of the men inside the vehicle eventually pulled the girl over the seat and placed her in the back of the van out of view from onlookers, Kolarik said.
The driver filled the car up with $21 of gas and the passenger went inside to pay for the fuel. The driver then came into the store and used the restroom before the van left the station and headed west, Kolarik said.
Police have taken footage from the store's surveillance cameras and made photos of the two men, Kolarik said.
Lincoln police, however, say it's still unclear who the girl inside the van was.
"Obviously we'd like to find it and find out what's going on," Lincoln police Capt. Allen Soukup said.
Salt Lake police have tried to contact Nebraska authorities about the incident but still had not heard back from them Friday night. "If there was something significant, we assume they would have gotten back to us," Louis said.
The van is blue or gray in color, with a Pennsylvania license plate ECJ1368. One of the men told Kolarik they were heading to Wisconsin.