Jesse was reported missing in the early morning of July 18 from his Buckeye home near 239th Avenue and Twilight Trail. His mother, Crystal Wilson, said she awoke about 1:30 a.m. to find him missing from his room after he had gone to bed four hours earlier.
Police said it appeared that Jesse slipped out his bedroom window and wandered — something he had done in the past but never for an extended period.
In the weeks since Jesse's disappearance, police from around the Phoenix area, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and volunteers have searched in the neighborhood and in nearby fields, using drones to search lakes and desert areas.
However, since the Aug. 11 large-scale search by authorities focusing on areas in a 5- to 10-square-mile radius of Jesse’s house, it appears active law-enforcement-directed searches have stopped.
The search for Jesse continues in a private investigation that began last weekend by a team hired by Jesse’s biological grandmother, Cynthia Lauderdale.
According to Lauderdale’s friend and spokeswoman, Jaime Medina, she and Lauderdale reached out to Arizona Extreme Terrain Search and Rescue to comb an area where Jesse was known to have frequented.
The team and Medina decided not to disclose the specific location of their searches, the same policy generally used by authorities since Jesse’s disappearance.
Weeks said earlier that law-enforcement searches focused on vacant lots, desert areas, canals and other bodies of water in the area.
Describing the search area as the desert between Buckeye and Avondale, Niehans said they have been searching for Jesse in washes, where flash floods in the area have the capability of moving a body 40 to 50 miles.
The team, usually made up of 10 people, uses volunteers and well-built terrain vehicles to cover a lot of ground. The group uses a mapping system that allows them to follow and track their search patterns on the land.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news...y-arizona-children-reported-missing/90757204/
