At approximately 0100 hours on October 29, 2011 Search One was contacted by Carrollton PD to assist in the location of what was thought to be a 10 year old girl who had walked away in her sleep from a local apartment complex. The team responded and spent the first 14 hours of this operation attempting to locate the girl as a missing person. While there were suspicions early on in the event that there was more to the story than a wandering child it was not until her body was located at approximately 1530 hours that it was confirmed she had been abducted. While the efforts of our dog teams were instrumental in directing resources toward the area where her body was located the more important benefit our team was able to provide did not start until after she was located.
By this point Carrollton PD had a person of interest in for questioning and asked if our dogs would be able to pick out a vehicle from a line up if it had transported a body. We agreed to try and advised them of the parameters of how to set up a blind vehicle line up. Two of our dogs worked this line up independent of each other and both dogs alerted at the same location on the same vehicle. This information was used to obtain a search warrant and inside the driver’s door where both dogs had indicated a knife was found. Later test determined the knife had blood residue and eventually DNA proved it matched both the victim and the suspect.
Subsequently we were asked if our dogs could trail the suspect’s route from where the body had been located and again we agreed to make the attempt. The suspect’s shoes were obtained as a scent article and one of our Bloodhound handlers was able to trail the suspect vehicle route from the site of the body all the way back to the apartment from where she was abducted and indicated on the front door. Both the car line up and the suspect trail were used as key elements in the prosecution’s case against the suspect who late this past month pleaded guilty and was given a life sentence.
