Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

We must search without retreat for Jessica

The maddening search for Jessica Lunsford has moved into a new phase in which the efforts are less visible but just as intense.

Gone are the hundreds of volunteers who for days slogged through miles of woods around the 9-year-old's Homosassa Springs home since she was reported missing on Feb. 24. The volunteers on ATVs who scoured the nearby forests have also left.

These caring citizens were supplanted late last week by specially trained search teams that for days combed an area close to the house as well as the so-called exit streets from the neighborhood.

Gone, too, is the sheriff's mobile command center, which had become a fixture in front of the Lunsfords' Sonata Avenue home. Its removal on Thursday was a tangible indication of the shift in tactics by law enforcement.

From the beginning, authorities have attacked this mystery on multiple levels. They have poked and prodded the ground while using high-tech gear to search from the sky. They have interviewed family members, schoolmates, neighbors, church officials and people whose jobs may have taken them into the neighborhood, such as newspaper carriers.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement lists 208 sex offenders and predators in Citrus County, with more than 50 in the ZIP codes surrounding Jessica's home. All have been checked out, as have similar offenders elsewhere in Citrus and in surrounding counties.

So far, nothing of consequence has been found. Investigators are still digging for any definitive clue to give their efforts a clear direction.

Their frustration is shared by those in the community who are so eager for a resolution that they are willing to seize on any bit of information, no matter how suspect its source. On Friday, a whisper that Jessica's body had been found spread like a brushfire through the region by word of mouth and the Internet, leading Sheriff Jeff Dawsy to hold a press conference just to quell the rumors.

In the meantime, authorities have had to shift gears, moving from the massive ground search to more intensely investigating the 2,000-plus tips that they have received from various sources.

This is not to say, of course, that those tips have languished while the searches were being conducted. Detectives have methodically logged in and begun tracking these possible leads since Jessica was reported missing. Having exhausted all of the obvious venues for searching, however, these leads have become the main focus of the investigators.

This change makes sense from a law enforcement perspective, but it has the potential of inadvertently signaling to an anxious community that the investigators are lessening their efforts or, worse, that resignation is setting in.

Be assured, it is nothing of the sort.

As sheriff's spokeswoman Gail Tierney pointed out, investigators can only search the ground so much. "We have searched the areas that the experts say to look. Beyond that, she could be anywhere. You can't continue to search forever unless you have a tip to send you in that direction."

Thanks to the national attention that Jessica's disappearance has drawn, people from around the United States are sharing in our community's anguish.

The hope is that this sweeping spotlight might somehow reveal a clue to Jessica's whereabouts.

The biggest fear is that as more time passes without any new leads, the trail will grow colder and Jessica's case will fade from the public's consciousness and transition into one of the many heartbreaking instances of missing children around the country.

No one connected to this ordeal, however, is even considering that possibility.

Certainly not law enforcement.

Local investigators and ordinary citizens are pouring so much of themselves into this search because Jessica is one of our own. She is our daughter, our granddaughter, our classmate, our neighbor. Nothing like this has ever happened in Citrus County, and our community simply will not allow Jessica to become just another statistic.

Law enforcement officials may have called off the massive searches and removed their mobile command center from Jessica's front door, but they have not retreated from their efforts to find this little girl.

Neither should we.

Just as our neighbors Mike and Katia Hampton have offered a $25,000 reward for information that locates Jessica (part of a reward fund topping $115,000) and the U.S. Postal Service has delivered more than 42,000 fliers with information about the missing girl to area homes and businesses, the rest of us should do whatever we can to help in this mission of mercy.

If it were your child missing, would you expect anything less?

[Last modified March 6, 2005, 00:13:18]