Missing Girl, First Labeled Runaway, Feared Dead
SAVIDGE: Instead of lighting up, medical marijuana users may soon be able to bottom's up with a THC-infused soft drink. The controversial beverage tops our look across the country this morning. The California entrepreneur is quickly finding critics for his new soda pot, get it? Which is supposed to launch next month in Colorado. Some fear that children could easily confuse the drink with more conventional beverages. Well, it wasn't just tires that were squealing prior to this traffic accident yesterday near Kansas City. A little more than four dozen pigs out of some 700 on board escaped when a truck took a ramp too fast and overturned. Officers helped corral the swine that ran wild while the highway patrol closed the interstate. No word on whether the piggies were going to market. And the day after the Green Bay Packers beat the Chicago Bears for the NFC Championship, Packer-backer John Stone lost his job. The 34-year- old car salesman from suburban Chicago was fired for refusing to take off his Packers necktie. Get it? He's in Chicago. The dealership says Stone's tie might have upset customers loyal to "dah Bears." Changing gears now to a more serious subject. In Lubbock, Texas, a 15-year-old girl leaves for a baby-sitting job and then, just vanished. Now, a young girl's body has been found, and police say it could be hers. Let's start you at the beginning. This is Elizabeth Ennen. On January 4th, she went to baby-sit for a family friend at a local motel. She never came home. Her family says she was missing, but police classified her as a runaway. It was almost two weeks later when she was finally listed as missing and her photo was released to the community. Soon after, police arrested 45-year-old Humberto Salinas. He was the father of the children she was watching the night she disappeared. Police say they have evidence linking him to Ennen's disappearance but won't say what it is. Joining me via Skype, now, is Captain Greg Stevens with the Lubbock Police Department. And Captain, thank you very much for joining us, Captain. We know it's early this morning. Why has her case -- or why was it first treated as a runaway?</s>GREG STEVENS, CAPTAIN, LUBBOCK POLICE DEPARTMENT: Well, I think that a lot of people get kind of caught up in simple terminology and what word is used to classify one situation over another. And really, what happens when an officer goes out to these kinds of calls, and they come in quite often, the initial officer has to make a determination, and this call came in at about 1:00, 2:00 in the morning. The officer has to make a determination, and that determination is based upon whether the child or teenager is absent, voluntarily, or involuntarily. And he's looking for indications that the child is gone against their will or gone involuntarily. And in this particular case, there were no indications, at least none immediately apparent, that showed the officer that she was gone involuntarily right then. And so, the classification, then, is as a runaway. But again, that's a simple term that's used on how to classify the child in the NCIC, or the National Crime Information Center database system. Regardless --</s>SAVIDGE: I get the fact that, you're right, the term is simplistic.</s>STEVENS: Right.</s>SAVIDGE: But the result is quite complex in the sense that if it's deemed that she may have run away voluntarily, then, of course, this changes the whole attitude, I presume, of your investigation there afterwards and raising possible alarm bells, is that right?</s>STEVENS: Well, to some degree. But not as much as I think some would believe. There's a misconception that if it's considered a runaway, that it's simply shoved to the side and put in a drawer, and that is simply not the case. The case is assigned to an investigator right away. And this was no different. And the process of looking for the child has begun. Now, there's some criticism that a search party wasn't launched right away. The problem therein is if the officer doesn't have any place to start looking, if there's no report that a person was dragged into a car or was dragged from the theater, was dragged from the park, or something like that, there's no place to start looking right then, so --</s>SAVIDGE: But her purse was reported --</s>STEVENS: The next day --</s>SAVIDGE: Her purse was reported missing, which would imply that she left this behind and, if you're a runaway, you wouldn't necessarily do that, would you?</s>STEVENS: You wouldn't necessarily take it either. There was a -- one instance is that she didn't take her phone with her. We get runaway reports a lot of times where a teenager leaves the house because they got their phone taken away that disciplinary -- for disciplinary reasons. So, there's no one or two things that would say that, OK, automatically it's a missing endangered. And again, there's --</s>SAVIDGE: All right, we have to leave it there, sir.</s>STEVENS: So many factors that can come into play, here. Nonetheless, the child's name and information --</s>SAVIDGE: Captain Stevens?</s>STEVENS: Are listed into the same database. And the detectives did begin looking for her when that investigation began. And her photo was released a lot sooner than everybody believes that it was.</s>SAVIDGE: How much sooner, then? We were told two weeks.</s>STEVENS: It was sooner than that. Now, how soon the media puts that photo up, they're under the same -- they react the same, whether it's termed a runaway or termed a missing person, as well. They're under the same assumptions as we are, and that's kind of, I think, a human fallacy as to when you hear the word "runaway" versus "missing," you have a predisposition about that, I think.</s>SAVIDGE: But how much sooner than -- the photograph?</s>STEVENS: I have to -- the photograph was available as soon as we had it available, and I don't know the exact date of that. I'd have to look at that. I believe it was on that Friday right after the 5th. I'd have to look and see exactly what date that was.</s>SAVIDGE: All right. Captain Stevens, thank you very much for joining us this morning. We will take a break --</s>STEVENS: Yes.</s>SAVIDGE: Be back with more, after this.