Video May Have Clues In Missing Teen Case
A young, goateed man videotaped leaving a Target store moments before the apparent abduction of an 18-year-old woman from the adjoining parking lot is being sought for questioning, investigators said.
Experts also are analyzing signals from the Kelsey Smith's cell phone on Saturday night after she was abducted. A police spokesman estimated the signals — "pings" — sounded about 15 miles from the store.
He said the signals show that her phone passed through certain sites along a route that led to an area around a park south of Kansas City, Mo. The last signal was recorded at about 8 p.m. Saturday. The signals are believed to be Kelsey's family trying to reach her.
The man in the surveillance tape hadn't been identified as of Wednesday morning and was not being called a suspect, but he might have information about the disappearance of Smith, Overland Park Police Chief John Douglas said.
Her parents say no one in the immediate family recognizes him.
The video shows a mid-70s Chevy pickup parking near Smith's car just seconds after she had pulled in and entered a Kansas City-area Target store, reports CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers.
Roughly ten minutes later, Smith returned to the parking lot. This video seems to show someone shoving the 18-year-old into her car.
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," Douglas said. "So it is easy to conclude there was some kind of incident at the back of the car. Then the car leaves."
"We see activity," Douglas said of the videotape. "We are moving on the assumption — because the prudent thing to do is to treat this as an abduction — that there was some kind of force involved."
More than 50 detectives and officers from the area and the FBI were involved in the case, he said.
About two hours after Smith disappeared, her grandparents found her gray 1987 Buick in a parking lot at a mall in suburban Kansas City with her purse and packages still inside. Her cell-phone and ATM card were not, reports Bowers.
The Smith family has increased the reward for information about Kelsey's disappearance to $30,000. Greg Smith, who has been in law enforcement for 16 years, described his daughter as an outgoing young woman who plans to be a veterinarian.
"At least once or twice a day, you have your breakdown where you just have to go somewhere and let everything out. Then you pull yourself back together and remember we're trying — we're going to get Kelsey back, we're going to find her," Greg Smith said on CBS News' The Early Show.
Hundreds of people have spent long hours searching for her, passing out flyers, going door to door, and using the Internet.
"From her friends to people we don't know, church groups, the Red Cross was out there. Many restaurants are donating food for the volunteers that are out there. It's been absolutely amazing how much people are out helping us," her mother Missey told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen.
Investigators said they don't know if Smith was picked at random or abducted by someone she knew. But Kelsey Smith's 23-year-old sister, Stevie Hockersmith, said she was sure her sister did not know the man police were seeking.
Wherever Kelsey is, Hockersmith said, she felt sure her sister was putting up a fight.
"He doesn't know what he's in for," she said. "Honestly, she'll raise all hell, and she won't stop. Kelsey won't stop until her body makes her stop basically, until she just can't go on anymore."