Possible Jessica lead not pursued
A Pasco dispatcher thought a tip about a girl seen at a grocery referred to a child already found. No deputy was sent out.
By STEVE THOMPSON
Published March 3, 2005
A woman who thought she might have spotted 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford outside a Land O'Lakes grocery store the day she disappeared called the Pasco County Sheriff's Office to report what she saw.
A dispatcher mistakenly told her the missing child had been found.
That error prompted the sheriff to change communications procedures, though he dismissed suggestions it hindered Jessica's recovery.
The unnamed woman reported that about 5:50 p.m. on Feb. 24, about 12 hours after Jessica's father said he discovered her missing from their home in Homosassa, she saw a girl wearing a hat get into a car at a Winn-Dixie.
Minutes later, the woman was home watching the 6 o'clock news when a picture of Jessica in a hat jogged her memory of the girl she had seen.
Though she had not seen the girl's face, she called the Sheriff's Office at 6:33 p.m. to describe the incident, a sheriff's spokesman said.
The dispatcher had not heard of Jessica's disappearance that morning and asked the woman to hold while she conferred with a supervisor. She then told the woman the child was no longer missing, mistaking her for a missing Pasco boy who had been found.
When the woman later learned Jessica was still missing, she called WFLA-TV Ch. 8. The station asked the Sheriff's Office for a tape of the phone call.
A detective later interviewed the woman and examined surveillance tapes at the Winn-Dixie. The investigation produced no leads, the Sheriff's Office said.
Pasco Sheriff Bob White said he wishes his agency had handled the call differently, but downplayed its significance.
In a letter to WFLA, White said his agency gets 1,200 calls a day, many of which relate to possible missing children.
The woman's call came more than a half-hour after she sighted the girl in the hat, the letter said. "Our investigator believes that had we responded to the store at that time this child, in all likelihood, would have been gone from the store," White wrote.
The letter said the girl, as the woman described the scene, did not seem to be in distress.
The sheriff also wrote that on the day the woman called, the agency's communications center was making a "once-in-a-lifetime move" from Dade City to New Port Richey. A supervisor who was notified by e-mail of Jessica's disappearance did not receive the message until later because his computer was down.
While the sheriff called "baseless" suggestions that the dispatcher's actions hindered Jessica's recovery, he announced a change in procedures. E-mail bulletins will be accessible to more employees within the communications center, he said.
"I would like to have had a better response to this call," the sheriff wrote, "but for the reasons previously mentioned, I am told in all likelihood this would not have changed the outcome of our investigation into the incident."