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Photo helps trigger alert for lost girl, 11

The FBI enters the case as photos taken by a camera at a Sarasota carwash cast light on the abduction.

SARASOTA - They used specially trained dogs to track scents, flew helicopters to hunt for clues and made appeals on national TV. They even enlisted the help of NASA.

The disappearance of Carlie J. Brucia, a popular 11-year-old girl abducted Sunday while walking home from a sleepover, has led to one of the most extensive searches in Sarasota history.

On Monday, a statewide "Amber alert" was issued, helping spur hundreds of tips that have poured in to a toll-free hotline.

In a news conference carried on national TV Tuesday, Carlie's mother appealed to her daughter.

"Carlie, I love you," Susan Schorpen said during the news conference. "If you can call, I have this phone on me at all times. Call home. Please call. You are loved. You are missed. We need you."

Earlier Tuesday, Sarasota sheriff's Maj. Kevin Gooding offered his assurances, saying investigators would "stop at nothing" to find her.

Carlie's father, Joe Brucia, appeared with Gooding and pleaded for anyone with information to come forward.

"I just love my daughter very much, and I need her home," he said.

The disappearance has terrified Carlie's friends at McIntosh Middle School and stunned her close-knit neighborhood north of Bee Ridge Road.

Family, friends and sheriff's deputies employed low-tech and high-tech searches.

Friends taped up fliers along Bee Ridge Road and as far north as a convenience store at Howard Avenue and Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa.

Deputies checked out word of an altercation in Kissimmee with a man and a female matching Carlie's description. They searched nearby woods and said they would do so again.

But the Sheriff's Office focused much of its effort on the most crucial piece of evidence so far in the case:

A series of chilling digital photos that show a man in a dark uniform leading Carlie away. They were taken about 6:20 p.m. Sunday, behind Evie's, a popular business that features a driving range, carwash, ice cream store and miniature golf.

Family members say they didn't recognize the man and that Carlie would not leave with a stranger unless forced.

The FBI was working with NASA to digitally enhance the images in hope of turning up more clues, such as identifying tattoos. Gooding said he wants to see some sort of image of the abductor, possibly one blown up and enhanced from a digital photo. But he also appealed to the man himself.

"I'd like to make a plea to the man who took her away and to anyone who knows of her whereabouts: Please bring Carlie home."

For Carlie's family - her mother, stepfather and brother in Sarasota, as well as her natural father - the ordeal began Sunday evening, about the time the Super Bowl was getting ready to start.

Carlie had called and said she was walking home from a girlfriend's house where she had spent the night. Not wanting her to walk the whole mile, her stepfather, 36-year-old Steven Kansler, drove up Bee Ridge Road looking for her.

When he couldn't find her, he told his wife. They called the friend's house, but the friend said Carlie had already left.

The family called police and Kansler resumed his search.

The next day, staff at Evie's found Carlie's picture taken by a surveillance camera behind the car wash, along Carlie's route home.

Her disappearance has shaken people like Rick Bradford, whose daughter, Courtney, is a good friend of Carlie's. The two have slept at each other's homes several times, he said.

"She's a very popular girl, everyone knows her. . . . For a lot of girls around here it's too close to home. It's not that big a town," Bradford said.

At the middle school, he said, "they're going to have to do some kind of counseling. This morning I know my daughter wouldn't go get the paper."

He said he had to drive her to the bus stop and wait with her on Tuesday.

Carlie is described as a friendly girl who loves music, shopping and spending time with friends. She is 5 feet tall, 120 pounds, blond and blue-eyed. She was last seen wearing jeans, a red top and a pink backpack.

At first, police treated her disappearance as a missing juvenile because they had no evidence to suggest otherwise, Gooding said.

Only on Monday, when the pictures turned up, did they classify it as an abduction. They waited for a few more hours before sounding the Amber alert, because they thought they might be able to find the man in the digital photo before issuing the alert. Now Carlie's disappearance has been picked up on the Amber alert network, meaning information on her abduction has gone out to hundreds of radio and TV broadcasters statewide, as well as clerks who run lottery machines. It will also appear on all 120 message signs installed across the state. This network can reach people in unexpected places.

Jennifer Thornberg, 25, lives across busy McIntosh Road from Carlie's house. She saw sheriff's cars across the street Sunday but didn't know what was happening until later when she read an online news service on her computer that carried the Amber alert.

"Otherwise I don't know that I would have known what was going on," she said.

Some say the Amber alert should have been sounded Sunday, considering that Carlie is only 11 and had never before disappeared.

"They shouldn't have had to wait 24, 25 hours for a child. I'm sorry, that's wrong with these sickos out here today," said family friend Bruce Meeks.

Since the inception of Florida's Amber alert plan in August 2000, 62 alerts have been issued, including the alert for Carlie.

All but three of those children have been located and 11 of those children were found because someone saw an Amber alert, said Donna Hodges, a crime intelligence analyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

- Information from the Associated Press was used in this story.

The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office has encouraged anyone with information about Carlie J. Brucia or the man who abducted her to call this toll-free hotline: 1-(888) 382-6237.