http://www.justicequest.net/forums/showp...tcount=446
Someone on JusticeQuest posted the whole article for all to see, so I am pasting it here in case the link doesn't work:
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FBI tight-lipped about search for missing girl
Friday, September 30, 2011 6:35 AM CDT
WESTON — Members of the FBI’s Evidence Response team donned thin white coveralls and took photographs in the back yard of a Dennison Street home Wednesday morning.
Yet if the mysterious disappearance of 3-year-old Aliayah Lunsford had turned from a search into an investigation, FBI leaders were staying away from making a public statement on it.
In fact, they insisted they remained focused on getting the girl back to her family.
“There are many possibilities here,” said Jeffrey Killeen, supervisory special agent and chief division counsel for the FBI. “Is the child someplace where someone is feeding or clothing her? We don’t know. We’re still trying to locate her. Again, we’re still very hopeful that we can find her. Time is going by and it’s getting critical. We want to find her. We want to find where she is as soon as possible.”
Meanwhile, late Wednesday, law enforcement officials were at the site of a pond near a casting factory off U.S. 19 between Weston and Bendale. It appeared they were draining the pond while searchers in a rowboat tried to peer into the water.
“It’s being drained. That’s about all I can say. We are looking at the pond. But we also have our search and rescue teams out,” Killeen said around 8:30 p.m. “It’s one of many facets. ... We’re pursuing everything possible with the emphasis of finding this child.”
Mike Rodriguez, special agent in charge of the FBI in Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, indicated it’s too early to shift from a missing person case.
“It really is too soon to tell,” Rodriguez said during a press conference Wednesday in a parking lot of nearby Lewis County High School.
“Investigative steps are being taken, and of course we’re combing the area,” Rodriguez said. “We have so many supporters. We have Mountaineer Search and Rescue walking (the area). Everybody’s just lending a hand and doing the right thing.
“It’s too soon to tell whether this is a crime scene or not. We don’t have any indication of foul play at this moment,” he said, stressing those last three words. “We’re just following every lead, following every tip, every piece of evidence that we find to see if we can find this child.”
Killeen said they “don’t really have what we’d call a suspect at this point in time.”
“We have a missing child. This is a child of tender years, only 3 years old,” he said. “This is one of our most vulnerable people in our society. We have to do everything possible from a law enforcement perspective, from a rescue perspective … for this child.”
Lunsford was reported missing Saturday.
Previous interviews with local law enforcement revealed that Lunsford lived in the Bendale community with her mother, who is eight months pregnant with twins, and four siblings, ages 9 months to 11 years.
Volunteers and authorities searched throughout the day Tuesday, and then all the way through the night and into the day again Wednesday.
Lewis Sheriff Mike Gissy said the child’s age, weight and other factors played into the decision for the around-the-clock search.
“We thought that was a necessity to continue that ... throughout the daytime into nighttime,” Gissy said. “That’s a little unusual, but it was something we wanted to do to say we exerted our entire effort.”
There continued to be no shortage of volunteers. But, food was running low at the Bendale United Methodist Church, which had been established as a home base for operations.
John Hambrick, FBI supervisory senior resident agent based in Clarksburg, said law enforcement spent much time Tuesday “looking at where we’d been and gathering specific areas that we want to refocus on. We’re following all the leads. In some cases, we’re going back and re-addressing leads. It’s a very methodical approach.”
Hambrick repeatedly declined to talk about specifics of the investigation, including even what technology was being used.
But he did offer two interesting comments.
“As the information comes in, as leads come in, as we continue to fill in the gaps and paint the picture on the matter, we make progress,” he said at one point.
And he also said the following not long before the Evidence Response team was seen at work outside the home and on a vehicle parked in the back yard, just off Armory Street.
“I’m not discussing (specifics of Wednesday’s efforts) at this time,” Hambrick said. “Some of it will be painfully obvious to you. It is important to the investigation, to the purity of the investigation, that we not conduct it in the public forum. I will get you every bit of information that I can possibly get you, and yet I don’t want to taint the investigative effort.”
Gissy indicated the volunteers are a long way from done.
“I think they’ve done excellent up to this time,” the sheriff said. “And from what I’m able to gather from them, we have a lot of hours left in us.”
http://www.cpubco.com/articles/2011/09/30/news/01.txt
![[Image: Zy3rKpW.png]](https://i.imgur.com/Zy3rKpW.png)
