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Post by Admin on Jul 22, 2014 15:29:02 GMT
Walk through the front door of the home of Rebecca Adams's grandmother Patsy Gifford, and the first thing you notice are the maps, spread out on a coffee table by the sofa, covered with tiny hand-drawn squares, shaded in with black ink. "These are the areas that have been searched," Rebecca's uncle Dennis Gifford tells PEOPLE as he runs his finger over the paper. "But the woods here are so dense, so thick and they’ve found nothing." Gifford, like everyone else in Kenai, Alaska (pop. 7,300), is struggling to explain how his 22-year-old niece Rebecca, her two daughters Michelle Hundley, 6, and Jaracca Hundley, 3, and her boyfriend Brandon Jividen, 37, could have just vanished from their three-bedroom apartment. Last seen on May 25, the family members, who left behind all their belongings, including their wallets and keys to their cars, have been the subject of intense – and, so far fruitless – search efforts, involving local police, the FBI, scent dogs, helicopters, planes and dozen of trained personnel and volunteers. "It's a mystery," admits Kenai Police Chief Gus Sandahl. "We just don’t know where they are." Family and friends of the couple, who were in the process of constructing a new home, describe them as "happy and excited to be building a life together." But on the day of their disappearance, Rebecca, known as a doting mom, sounded uncharacteristically upset. "She said, 'Just know that I love you,' " her older sister Lanell Adams says of their last conversation. That call still haunts Lanell, who has blanketed the region with missing posters and helped organize numerous searches in the dense woodlands around the couple’s apartment where Jividen, an avid outdoorsman and hunter, would often go hiking. "I’m not giving up until I find them,” says Lanell, who has spent the past five weeks away from her children and her job in Puyallup, Washington, looking for her sister, nieces and Jividen. The family has set up a funding site to cover costs in their ongoing search efforts.
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Post by Admin on Jul 23, 2014 15:19:49 GMT
The Portland Police Bureau's Missing Persons Unit is asking for the public's help in locating 17-year-old Sierra Shaver. She is thought to be in the company of 41-year-old Pitya Yugusuk Lojuan, also known as "Lo Lo." Shaver is described as an Asian female, 5'7" tall, 185 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a black, knee-length dress and brown sandals with flowers on them. Lojuan is described as an African American male, 5'11" tall, and 160 pounds. Shaver ran away from home on Monday. July 21. She was later seen in the company of Lojuan. They left the area of Jefferson High School in a white Nissan pickup. The circumstances leading to Shaver running away and her relationship to Lojuan are under investigation. Anyone seeing Shaver is asked to immediately call 9-1-1. Anyone with non-emergency information about Sierra and/or Lojuan is asked to call Detective Lori Fonken at (503) 823-1081 or email her at lori.fonken@portlandoregon.gov.
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Post by Admin on Jul 25, 2014 4:56:32 GMT
The heartbroken Sheffield mum whose son vanished 23 years ago today has flown abroad 1,000 times looking for her son. Kerry Needham, aged 42, last went overseas only last month, to Turkey, after a holidaymaker sent her a picture of a hotel worker similar in looks to the way experts believe Ben would look today. She also visited Turkey in January following up another lead. Kerry, from Ecclesfield, said she has spent ‘hundreds of thousands’ of pounds searching for her beloved son, who vanished from outside a remote farmhouse his grandparents were renovating on the Greek holiday island of Kos in July 1991. “Any leads we get through our website or other means I pass to South Yorkshire Police, but they have to go through the proper channels and contact the Greek authorities, which is a process which can take months, so it is often quicker for me just to jump on a plane,” she said. “If I am sent a picture of somebody who works in a place I can visit I prefer to resolve the issue myself rather than having to wait for the authorities. It has certainly drawn on our finances over the years, which is one of the reasons I brought out a book about Ben’s disappearance - to help pay for the flights. I just can’t sit and wait for six months if we get a good lead, knowing I can be on a plane the following day to look at somebody myself to see if it could be Ben.” She said she will spend today thinking of her son, who was 21 months old when he vanished. Kerry said her theory is that Ben was snatched to be sold on by gypsies, but that there was so much publicity surrounding her son’s disappearance he ended up staying with his captors. “I absolutely believe Ben is still alive and that because of the life gypsies lead - travelling and living in camps - he won’t have ever seen all the publicity about himself,” she said. Kerry said she feels ‘angry’ and ‘abandoned’ by the British Government, pointing out that while the family of missing British girl Madeleine McCann has a team of dedicated police officers looking for the youngster, the South Yorkshire officers helping search for Ben ‘all have other jobs’.
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Post by Admin on Jul 30, 2014 6:36:17 GMT
A large crowd is expected to gather later this week to mourn the death of a 14-year-old girl whose body was found in the woods along a popular nature trail in Macomb County. A large crowd is expected to gather later this week to mourn the death of a 14-year-old girl whose body was found in the woods along a popular nature trail in Macomb County. April was reported missing by her mother last Thursday after she failed to return home from walking her dog, Penny, which she does nearly every night. Hours later, April’s body was found in a drainage ditch along the Macomb Orchard Trail near Fulton and Depot roads. Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw said Penny, a Border Collie, stayed with April’s body until catching the attention of passersby. “Two joggers were going around the trail and a dog actually alerted that there was something amiss in the wood line,” Shaw told WWJ’s Mike Campbell. “When they went to investigate what it was, that’s when they found the body.” April’s death has been ruled a homicide, although authorities have released few details about the cause — expect to say she was not shot or stabbed. Police are still looking for a long gray box van that was seen in the area of the crime scene, described as a “painters’ type van” with dents all over it. Police said they’re not yet sure how or if the van is connected to the case — but they want to speak with two white males spotted in the vehicle. Detectives are also searching for a young man who was seen riding a small cc motorcycle, blue and white in color, on the trail around the time April was killed. Witnesses told police the man was wearing a black helmet, but were unable to provide his physical description. Anyone who might have information on the case is urged to contact police at 877-616-4677. Tips may also be submitted online at www.michigan.gov/michtip.
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Post by Admin on Aug 3, 2014 6:01:13 GMT
Researchers at a European university are testing a new way to find victims who may be buried underneath thousands of pounds of rubble. They employed drones to sniff out the data packets emitted by mobile phones. “The drone’s WiFi antenna could be replaced by Avalanche Victim Detectors which would enable the rapid and inexpensive deployment of the first avalanche searches,” Jonathan Cheseaux, a student at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, said. As an amateur mountaineer Cheseaux realized that most people, even those climbing the sides of mountains or the majority of the population in some of the world’s poorest countries carry cellphones, and that their signals could be used to track survivors after a natural disaster. The remotely controlled aircraft contains two powerful antennas that pick up the data signals the cell phones emit and send the information back to an interface on the ground where a search team could coordinate efforts. The researchers built a system that can track the drone in real time from the computer and colored dots on the control screen show where the spotted phones are. This kind of technology has been the subject of much fuss in the United States; the Federal Aviation Administration sent a cease and desist letter to one Texas-based search and rescue operation that was using drone technology as they help families find their missing loved ones. But this month a federal court told the FAA their letter was invalid, allowing the group to continue using the remotely controlled aircraft in searches. And a man’s life was saved in Virginia last weekend when an amateur drone team lent a hand in the search for the missing 83-year-old and ultimately discovered him alive and well in a massive field near his home.
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