DAVENPORT, Iowa (KWQC) - Missing 10-year-old
Breasia Terrell has not been seen since the early morning hours on Friday, July 10. As the investigation into her disappearance continues, Davenport police are being assisted by a handful of agencies, including the
FBI and the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Davenport police
addressed the public Monday about the ongoing investigation. Chief Paul Sikorski said, “At this time, we continue to focus our resources on the investigation to pursue the leads that have been developed and are evaluating the tips provided to us by the community.”
On Tuesday, TV6 spoke with Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Omaha Division, Kristi Johnson, who remains in Davenport working on Terrell’s case.
Johnson said, “Every day in the FBI we maintain excellent relationships with our local police departments and our police chiefs. In this investigation, on July 10 we were in contact with the Chief and offered our assistance with respect to everything that we can offer in a case like this, and of course, immediately we all started working together.”
Upon learning of Terrell’s disappearance, Sikorski said the department
immediately entered her into the National Crime Information Center database, and contacted the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, among other agencies.
“I absolutely applaud Chief Sikorski and the Davenport Police Department,” said John Bischoff, Vice President of the Missing Children Division of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
“They did an amazing job realizing what they had in front of them,” said Bischoff, “realizing the escalation that they needed to do and calling the appropriate resources. From time to time we do see cases where some people think they have it, and ‘I don’t need any extra assistance,' but this is a big deal and Chief Sikorski did an amazing job by making the call to reach out to the FBI and get them involved early, and reach out to us as the national clearinghouse and get us involved very early and apply those resources because he knew he had a situation on his hands.”
“The tools that the FBI brings to the table involve something called our Cellular Analysis Survey Team, which is the phone analysis and looking at all of the phone records and the location information,” said Johnson. “We also bring to the table something called the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team, which is a team of 12 agents that come on scene and are here in town working day in and day out to identify any additional evidence that we need to try to bring the case to a successful conclusion.”
Johnson said, “We have an Evidence Response Team out of Omaha that came here to assist, and that will continue on throughout the course of the investigation if needed.” She said the team of specially trained technicians is made up of analysts and professional staff members, “We’ve got the best team we can have.”
“First and foremost we assist in getting the image out into the community because that’s key having the child’s image out into the eyes of the community so they know this child has been missing and we need the public’s support in looking for this child. I know Iowa’s been amazing with this. They’ve had amazing turnouts with volunteers,” said Bischoff, of the role that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children plays in missing child cases.
“We also have field resources,” he said, “we have a cadre of support. They’re retired police officers who have had a lifetime of experience in working missing child cases and just because they’ve hit the point of retirement they don’t lose that skill set. They come and do contract work for us and we train them. We deploy them to the scene of which was one of the early resources that was accepted on day one of this missing child incident.”
‘You may not see the FBI, but we are there,' FBI among agencies involved in search for Breasia Terrell
