Thursday, November 05, 2009
Searching for Morgan Harrington: Parents ask for weekend help
Dan and Gil Harrington are calling on volunteers to take part in a three-day search for their missing daughter.
Photos by Sam Dean The Roanoke Times
In an effort to communicate with her daughter, Gil Harrington displays a family symbol during a news conference. A nonprofit that works to find missing children has organized a search effort that will begin Friday in Charlottesville.
A memorial on Charlottesville's Copley Road bridge, the place where missing Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington was last spotted, features a note of thanks to the city of Charlottesville from the Harrington family.
Dan and Gil Harrington listen as Ed Smart discusses plans for a search for Morgan Harrington in Charlottesville over the weekend. Smart's daughter Elizabeth was abducted from Salt Lake City in 2002 and found alive nine months later.
Ed Smart came to Charlottesville to assist with the search for Morgan Harrington. "People do come back," Smart said. "Not everyone is lost."
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Matt Chittum | The Roanoke Times
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CHARLOTTESVILLE The family of missing Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington on Wednesday called on volunteers to join them in a three-day "community search party" that will scour Charlottesville for their daughter.
The Texas-based Laura Recovery Center is organizing the Friday-through-Sunday search. Also, the father of Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted from her Salt Lake City bedroom in June 2002 but was found alive nine months later, arrived in Charlottesville on Wednesday to offer hope and help to the Harringtons as they promote the hunt. Ed Smart called on people to come forward with any helpful information about the whereabouts of Harrington, of Roanoke County.
"There is a girl that is lost out there that needs to be found, and somebody out there, I believe, knows something," he said during a news conference near the bridge where Harrington was last seen Oct. 17.
Morgan Harrington's father, Dan, told a dozen assembled reporters that he had asked Smart to come to Virginia to help him and his wife, Gil, cope with their daughter's disappearance. Smart, who admitted to occasionally doubting that his own daughter would be found alive, nevertheless said he never gave up believing she would return, and he urged the Harringtons to keep believing their 20-year-old daughter will be found.
"People do come back," he said. "Not everyone is lost."
Smart's daughter, Elizabeth, now 21, recently testified that her abductor snatched her from her bed at knifepoint, drugged her, tethered her to a tree and raped her repeatedly during her nine-month ordeal. Her alleged kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, has a competency hearing scheduled later this month in Salt Lake City.
Harrington disappeared during an Oct. 17 Metallica concert she was attending at the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville. She left her friends to go to a restroom but ended up outside, unable to re-enter. In a conversation on her cellphone, she told her friends she might try to find a ride home with friends in Charlottesville. About 40 minutes later she was seen on the Copeley Road bridge about a quarter of a mile south of the arena. She has not been seen since.
Dan Harrington asked that anyone interested in joining the search party attend a meeting at the Cavalier Inn at 105 N. Emmet St. in Charlottesville at 7 p.m. today. Volunteers will be issued vests and will convene at 9 a.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday to search the city, beginning with the immediate area around the arena, he said.
The Laura Recovery Center, founded in memory of Laura Smither, who was abducted and murdered 12 years ago, issued a statement asking that all volunteers be at least 18, bring identification and dress for hiking. The nonprofit works to help find missing children.
Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said police have looked over the area several times already but welcome the new search and will be working with volunteers to coordinate the effort.
Geller said State Police have received about 350 calls on the agency's tip line at (434) 352-3467. Investigators are following up each lead, she said. (One tip prompted police to search the Pantops area of Charlottesville on Wednesday afternoon.) Meanwhile, Metallica has added $50,000 to the reward being offered by the Jefferson Area Crime Stoppers for the location and recovery of Harrington, bringing the total to more than $150,000.
Harrington has blue eyes and blond hair and stands 5-foot-6 and weighs 120 pounds. She was last seen wearing a black miniskirt, a black T-shirt with the name of metal band Pantera in tan letters across the front, black tights and black knee-high boots.
A gaunt Gil Harrington spoke at Wednesday's news conference but not to reporters. She looked into the cameras of the television crews and addressed her comments directly to her missing daughter: "Morgan ... be strong. We are trying to find you. We will never stop. We are trying, honey. Hang on."
