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| © Poweshiek County Sheriff’s Office/ Mollie Tibbetts, 20, has been missing since going for a jog in Brooklyn, Iowa, on Thursday. The FBI has recently joined the search for the missing college student. |
By Lindsey Bever, Cleve Wootson,
Investigators are still searching for Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old college student who vanished last week while jogging in central Iowa, authorities said.
[post_ads]Federal, state and local authorities have been following numerous leads, scouring areas throughout Poweshiek County for Tibbetts. Investigators hope that data from a Fitbit she wore on her wrist, as well as her cellphone and social media accounts, may help lead them to her whereabouts, Richard Rahn, special agent in charge with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), said Friday morning.
“We’ll have to analyze it and figure out what it’s telling us,” Rahn told The Washington Post.
Tibbetts was last seen July 19 in Brooklyn, Iowa. The University of Iowa student’s last known communication was a Snapchat message she sent to her boyfriend, Dalton Jack, for whom she was house sitting, . Jack, who was out of town, looked at it but didn’t immediately reply.
His “good morning” text the next day received no answer, and Tibbetts didn’t pick up her phone when someone at the day-care center where she worked called to figure out why she didn’t show up. Every call went straight to voice mail.
Assistant Director of DCI Field Operations Mitchell Mortvedt that Tibbetts’s family members and her boyfriend have been cleared of suspicion. “At this point, we don’t feel [they have] any involvement in her disappearance,” he said.
For more than a week, dozens of volunteers in the small town of Brooklyn, population nearly 1,500, have been combing ditches, cornfields and empty buildings for any sign of the 20-year-old. that authorities have also searched pig farms in the area, though Rahn, with the DCI, said he could not say where exactly investigators are looking for the young woman.
“Please ask anyone and everyone if they have seen Mollie and show her photo,” a post on the . “Canvass the state and outside of Iowa if possible. Go to gas stations, rest areas, truck stops, restaurants, and other high traffic areas.”
Despite the effort, searchers have found no trace of the woman or clues about what may have happened to her.
“It’s frustrating. It’s powerless. We’re racking our brains, thinking what can we think of to tell the investigators,” Kim Calderwood, Tibbetts’s aunt, . “It’s the worst thing — to want to fix something you can’t fix.”
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Investigators are still searching for Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old college student who vanished last week while jogging in central Iowa, authorities said.
[post_ads]Federal, state and local authorities have been following numerous leads, scouring areas throughout Poweshiek County for Tibbetts. Investigators hope that data from a Fitbit she wore on her wrist, as well as her cellphone and social media accounts, may help lead them to her whereabouts, Richard Rahn, special agent in charge with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), said Friday morning.
“We’ll have to analyze it and figure out what it’s telling us,” Rahn told The Washington Post.
Tibbetts was last seen July 19 in Brooklyn, Iowa. The University of Iowa student’s last known communication was a Snapchat message she sent to her boyfriend, Dalton Jack, for whom she was house sitting, . Jack, who was out of town, looked at it but didn’t immediately reply.
His “good morning” text the next day received no answer, and Tibbetts didn’t pick up her phone when someone at the day-care center where she worked called to figure out why she didn’t show up. Every call went straight to voice mail.
Assistant Director of DCI Field Operations Mitchell Mortvedt that Tibbetts’s family members and her boyfriend have been cleared of suspicion. “At this point, we don’t feel [they have] any involvement in her disappearance,” he said.
For more than a week, dozens of volunteers in the small town of Brooklyn, population nearly 1,500, have been combing ditches, cornfields and empty buildings for any sign of the 20-year-old. that authorities have also searched pig farms in the area, though Rahn, with the DCI, said he could not say where exactly investigators are looking for the young woman.
“Please ask anyone and everyone if they have seen Mollie and show her photo,” a post on the . “Canvass the state and outside of Iowa if possible. Go to gas stations, rest areas, truck stops, restaurants, and other high traffic areas.”
Despite the effort, searchers have found no trace of the woman or clues about what may have happened to her.
“It’s frustrating. It’s powerless. We’re racking our brains, thinking what can we think of to tell the investigators,” Kim Calderwood, Tibbetts’s aunt, . “It’s the worst thing — to want to fix something you can’t fix.”
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| © Poweshiek County Emergency Management Agency/ |
Mollie’s brother, Jake Tibbetts, the family went “through stages of scared and sad. And now we’re anxious and confused.”
“Mollie has the biggest heart of anyone we ever knew,” he said. “She was never shy…. She had room in her heart for everyone.”
The University of Iowa said in a statement Wednesday, “Our thoughts continue to be with Mollie Tibbetts’ family and friends.”
Jack he cannot remember details from the last Snapchat he received from Tibbetts. From the photo, he said, it looks like she was inside a house, but he said he does not remember what the caption said.
Tibbetts was born in San Francisco and moved to Brooklyn with her mother when she was in second grade. She won state speech competitions, was involved in theater and ran cross-country. She was studying psychology, as her mother did.
As people searched, those closest to Tibbetts asked everyone to hold on to hope — and keep sharing information about her.
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“We remain in awe and indebted to the help, creativity, outreach and love that you have shown Mollie and all of us,” Sandi Tibbetts Murphy, a cousin, wrote on the wall of the Finding Mollie Tibbetts Facebook page. “Please keep sharing Mollie’s information so we can bring our girl safely home.”
Authorities said Tibbetts may have been wearing denim shorts and a red T-shirt when she disappeared. Anyone with information has been asked to call police.
