I'm a (somewhat) local too :woohoo: so I know exactly what you mean! I have been glued to this case from the beginning because this is too close to home for me. What scares the crap out of me is the lack of experience LE has when it comes to cases like this. How can we possibly expect a tiny town's LE to know the "right" way to handle scenarios like this when they happen next to NEVER?
I really pray LE are going to surprise the heck outta me and break this wide open with something soon that gives these poor families SOME sort of answer (good or bad). I believe they are all doing all they can to bring these girls home.
Stranger abductions happen next to never for almost any town in the US.
Yes, there are things that would no doubt have been handled differently had the Evansdale PD known from the very beginning that this was an abduction versus two kids who were lost or ran away or who had been in some sort of accident.
But they couldn't know that in advance, no one could. Preserving what no one knew was a crime scene was incompatible with searching the lake area around that rock jetty and the wooded area. It was most important to move fast in case any number of potential accidents that could result in two unconscious kids had happened.
From where I'm sitting (90 miles away), it looks to me like the Evansdale PD handled it well. As soon as they got the report from Heather Collins that there were two missing girls, they started searching. They called in the local volunteer firefighters to help search. They covered a significant amount of the town on that first evening.
Just that much response would be hotly envied by many people who have had children disappear and gotten a "yawn, probably just another runaway" reaction from their local PD.
LE managed to get over 800 people out that first Saturday to search. They got over 1000 people out that first Sunday to search. They covered 12 square miles in one weekend. They did it in horrible heat and humidity without losing anyone to heatstroke or other serious accident, which speaks well of their safety precautions.
A lot of families of missing children are lucky if the local PD searches 12 blocks!
Not only did the Evansdale PD act fast, they started calling for help ASAP. They called the state SAR organisations for help which allowed them to deploy very early the first Saturday morning.
When it started to look like it was more than two lost, runaway or injured children, they promptly called the DCI and the FBI for help.
So far as I can see, it looks to me like they did everything right and I don't see any really glaring mistakes.
I don't know if anyone else here remembers United Airlines Flight 232, which went down near Sioux City. Right afterward, so many people were depressed because 111 people on board died. It took awhile for it to sink in that the coordinated response of the pilots plus local emergency services saved 185 people.
That was a miracle because that jet went down too fast and at too steep an angle for a landing. It broke apart on landing, caught on fire and rolled over.
Yes, the loss of life was tragic but the excellent response to the conditions, both in the air and once the jet was on the ground, meant that a lot of lives were saved.
I see the Evansdale PD in much the same way. No, there hasn't been a storybook perfect ending (yet) but they have done darn well and I don't see any reason to reproach them.
Tangential note: someone I had admired for his excellent riding, Michael Matz, became my personal hero for getting out of that plane while leading 3 children to safety and then making the deliberate decision to go back in to the burning wreckage to save an infant.
lease:
