INTERVIEW WITH SHERIFF
1ST JANUARY
REPORTER - There's a lot of people here who are all in desperate need to find Johnathan and find him quickly. We've got Walker County Sheriff Nick Smith, he's here. You've got a lot of agencies here, a lot of people here - what's next as you all get started?
SHERIFF - So the search for Johnathan started yesterday. We got a call about 12.28, about a missing child of 4 years old. Just the report that we got, when we got here the child is actually 5 years old. The indications were that him and his brother were outside playing around the fence line with a dog, with a lab mixed dog with a white chest. The brother said that the dog and his brother went across the fence line, he went back to notify the father that the brother had crossed the fence line. There was about a 2 hour delay at this point that we have narrowed down. There was a 2 hour delay in calling law enforcement to get us out here, but when we were called, deputies were on scene with RPS at about 1.02 and they cleared the house to make sure that the child wasn't just hiding in the house. And we had a drone in the air since 1.15 all the way up till 3.00 o'clock this morning with aviation support, with thermal imagery, trying to find the child. We have not got any heat sensors. We had volunteers out yesterday doing ground searches, law enforcement out doing ground searches. Those ground searches around the house got suspended yesterday. We have got support from the FBI, state police, local municipalities, law enforcement, volunteers. There's just a whole lot of people to name that's stepped up to really help us. But we suspended the search. We obtained a search warrant for the house. There's explosives inside the house. We encourage anybody not to take any searching on on their own, if they want to search, they need to come sign in here at Cornerstone Church, so we know who's doing what because it is a... especially around the house, we're going to keep it limited to law enforcement just because of the threat of explosives throughout the property line.
REPORTER - Yeah wow what a day, so what... are you all gonna start going out in teams this morning and continue that search?
SHERIFF - Yeah so right now we're going to brief here shortly, we're going to organise team search groups to get out. Looks like we got a couple hundred people here that we're gonna be able to utilise today to do a significant ground search. Like I said, we didn't get any thermal hits from yesterday evening all the way through the night so that would indicate that the child is either not in the woods or the child is under some kind of structure. So I encourage people that live in this vicinity to make sure they're searching their vehicles, they're searching their garages, they're searching their carports, anything that a child could be hiding under that we might not have gotten to yet.
REPORTER - And I thought it was good advice, too, if you have a deer camera or any sort of video equipment to check that as well.
SHERIFF - So, if you have any kind of deer camera out in the woods please check that footage to see if you've got the child or the dog, I believe his name was Buck, on camera. So the child and the dog have still not been accounted for and were looking for both.
REPORTER - Thank you for talking to us, we know you've got a lot to do today, we appreciate you taking your time.