Search For Missing METALLICA Fan Finds No Leads
November 7, 2009, 14 years ago
here is reporting:
A massive search by 360 volunteers Friday apparently turned up no new leads in the disappearance of Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington, but organizers said they will return to the job today and Sunday.
Volunteers from across Virginia turned out to take part in the search across 2 square miles of Charlottesville.
Working in teams of 10, they formed lines to walk through woods and up and down slopes. They peeped into culverts, peered under parked cars and poked through piles of leaves with sticks. They also looked into the windows of abandoned homes and climbed through the underbrush of some of Charlottesville's woollier neighborhoods.
Each team spent between two and four hours scouring the area assigned to it, and some teams went out more than once. The Texas-based Laura Recovery Center, which organized the three-day search, anticipates as many as 1,000 people could repeat the effort today.
Harrington, of Roanoke County, has been missing three weeks. The 20-year-old vanished from an Oct. 17 Metallica concert here, and though investigators and her family continue to speak publicly of their hopes of finding her alive -- the possible victim of an abduction -- search organizers let volunteers know early Friday that might not be the case.
"If at any time during your search you smell an odor of decay, you need to try to determine if you can find the source of that odor," Dawn Davis of the recovery center said at the Virginia Department of Forestry headquarters building, which had been turned into a makeshift "Morgan Search Center.""If the worst has happened and you come across Morgan, you need to stop immediately - notify your team leader," Davis said.
Read more of the report, plus photos and video here.
