Police find body believed to be abducted teen
June 6, 2007
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – Police on Wednesday found a body they believe is that of a teenager who disappeared four days ago after she was apparently abducted from a department store parking lot.
Police Chief John Douglass said the body was found across the state line at a Grandview, Mo., lake. Positive identification was pending, but authorities believed it was 18-year-old Kelsey Smith.
He did not say how she was slain.
Officers had been searching woods at the lake since Tuesday after investigators traced two signals from Smith’s cell phone to an area about 15 miles east of the Target store in suburban Kansas City.
Police questioned “numerous people” but had not identified a suspect, Douglass said.
Authorities were still seeking information about a young man videotaped entering and leaving the Target store within moments of Smith. He said police still considered the unidentified man a “person of interest” and not a suspect.
Asked whether people should be concerned that the suspect could still be at large, Douglass said: “I think we all need to remain vigilant no matter what. I don’t want to overemphasize the importance of this, but we always need to use caution.”
Smith’s parents, Greg and Missy Smith, said Wednesday on “The Early Show” that they do not know the man in the surveillance video.
“None of our immediate family recognize him,” Greg Smith told CBS.
Officers also continued to look for information about a dark pickup that was seen entering the Target parking lot shortly after Smith’s car. Just before 7 p.m. Saturday, the pickup pulled into the parking lot aisle where Smith had parked about one minute earlier, police said. A man is seen leaving the pickup and going into the Target store Smith had entered.
On Tuesday, police released video showing a woman they believe is Smith being forced into her car. The tape was being enhanced at a forensics lab.
Smith, who graduated from high school less than two weeks ago, left the store around 7:10 p.m. and put packages into her car when someone ran toward her, police said.
“You see two individuals come together, and there is no separation of those two individuals,” Douglass said Tuesday. “So it is easy to conclude there was some kind of incident at the back of the car. Then the car leaves.”