Good morning, folks! Beautiful, unusually COOL day here in so. LA -great weather for searching.
I noticed someone upthread saying that there was nothing to sleuth. Before the day really gets revved up, I'd like to try to help focus things to get productive discussion, so here's how I see things:
We have two basic lines of inquiry right now, based upon the two main objects involved: Mickey and the bike.
The first main line of inquiry pertains to Mickey, i.e. the discussion of trucks and cameras on St. Landry St., as this is the last time she is seen. I need to take care of a lot of neglected personal business today, but I am going to try to make a map of where the camera are, and which cameras have released images or have been comfirmed by LE has having seen images. It will help focus discussion if we can stop playing ring-around-the-rosie all day about which camera saw what at which address in which order. The lack of a unified camera map for all to discuss off of has seemed to be the main confounding factor in discussing the trucks. Until I can do this, I might suggest that people refrain from definitively stating which camera saw what, where, without having and posting a source for that info. This would help streamline the discussion.
The discussion of the bike's discovery at Whiskey Bay is the other main line of inquiry. I find that yesterday, it was very neglected, in favor of wild speculation about the truck(s). I contacted the Lafayette Daily Advertiser reporter who was there at Whiskey Bay covering the discovery of the bike, and got the first solid statement of exactly where the bike was found, which was directly under the Whiskey-Bay bridge, in the Pilot Channel, no more than 30 feet from shore, off the western end of the Whiskey Bay exit area. Getting this confirmation now gives a more solid basis on discussing how/why the bike got there, although no one picked up on that new development last night. We now need to be re-examining the bike question, given that the new information does not rule out that the bike got/was placed there from the water, not from the land. The reporter indicated that LE is guessing that the bike got there from land, but were not sure.
Therefore the feasibility of the water approach vs. a land approach is a ripe topic for discussion. A key question is whether the bike could have been placed there by boat, and why, and whether the bike somehow could have drifted there, indicating that it could have been put in the water upstream of the bridge. A piece of valid sleuthing for folks to investigate is whether the bike could possibly have retained enough buoyancy to have not completely and immediately sunk to the bottom immobile, before arriving at the location it was found. I did some Internet searching on the buoyancy of bikes, and found statements from bike enthusiasts that
some bikes, depending upon weight and tire size, do retain some buoyancy. How much buoyancy Mickey's bike may have retained is not known, but could be important, especially if the back tire was off the rim but the innertube was not popped. The combination of strong currents in the Pilot Channel, buoyancy, and the water resistance of the spokes, etc., raise the question of how far the bike may have traveled downstream from a drop point. Someone here with access to a bike like Mickey's, a Schwinn Cutter, and a swimming pool, could do some key sleuthing here.
As far as a land approach, what does it say about the perps intentions and actions if the bike were placed there fom land, and how would this have been done. A key factor in addressing BOTH of these would be to determine and compare the water level at the bridge a couple days after her disappearance, compared to when the bike was found - i.e. was the bike in deeper water, and then a falling tide exposed it, or not? Answering this question, to me, would help sort out the land vs. water placement hypothesis. It is important to sleuth this, because the search for someone putting it there by land wold likely not involve the use of a boat, whereas a boat drop would change the search to how it got there from water, and where the boat could have come from.
So I see the two main lines of inquiry as sorting out the camera question as far as where Mickey might have ridden, and sorting out the bike drop vis a vis the verified location I obtained yesterday from the newspaper reporter.
The last thing I'd like to do is to put to rest any more discussion that Mickey was run over in front of the Circle K. For too many reasons to list, that is so very farfetched. But the one thing I'd like people to focus on is the raised right-front tire of the truck, and the odd image under the tire that does, at first glance, resemble a bike under a truck.
I can tell you exactly what you are seeing. There is a large, fresh, asphalt repair extending west from the University/St. Landry intersection to the exact point where the surveillance image shows the truck tire raised. Directly in front of the repair is a broken, uneven, discolored section of concrete. This latter section is what looks like "something under the front of the truck. It happens to be directly in front of a large bump to the far-right side of the lane in the last couple feet of the asphalt repair. To address those who ask why the left-front tire isn't going up: Because the large bump is ONLY on the right side of the lane.
Please view the following screencap from the video that two sleuthers took of driving over this bump. Look hard for the faint, horizontal dark shadow in the asphalt at the right of the lane. It's there, and it's a significant bump which clearly would have compressed the right-front suspension and thrown the truck tire significantly upward as the truck hit it. By complete coincididence, the truck happened to hit that bump at the exact moment of the surveillance capture, and the broken, discolored, depressed section of the old concrete happens to be directly in fron of the tire as is rises, creating what I admit is a stunning illusion. I don't blame wodalo for getting so exercised when he saw it in his Photoshop. It's an amazing optical illusion.
But an optical illusion is all it is, and it would be really helpful today to not keep returning to the thought that that is Mickey under the truck. Mickey is not under the truck; it's an optical illusion. We would be more productive exploring the last known location and how the bike got where it was found, and what it means.
Those are my focusing thoughts for the day. Below are the screencap of the obvious bump that raised the truck tire and the broken stretch of concrete that looks like Mickey, and also a map of Whiskey Bay. The bike was found a bit underneath the "E" in the words "PILOT CHANNEL."
Here, reposted, is the e-mail from the reporter detailing the bike's location:
Hi [chicken fried],
The bike was not found by the boat ramp, it was on the other side of State Route
975. It would be right below where you have Pilot Channel marked on the map.
Basically, when you are on State Route 975, heading toward I-10 from the exit
ramp, you can either turn right or left. If you go right, you end up at the boat
ramp. If you turn left, you are just in a gravel area without any kind of ramp.
Its on that side where the bike was found and that's the area where all of the
police were working last Sunday.
As best as i can tell, based on what police said, it would have been below the
"e" in channel. [on the map chicken fried attached to the reporter] The bike was directly under the interstate. The police made it sound like it was close to the bank...my best guess based on some other stuff they said is that it was no more than 30 feet from the bank.
I was back out there yesterday and got a better look. It's a good 15- to 20-foot
dropoff from the land to where the water is -- very steep and very rocky. It
makes it easier to see why police are not 100 percent sure whether the damage to
the bike came from a hit-and-run or something else. Just my personal opinion,
but it definitely looks possible that a bicycle could get damaged if someone
threw it in that terrain and that distance. But I don't have any other
information or details, that's just a personal observation.
