Hundreds volunteer in search for Utah girl

SALT LAKE CITY -- Hundreds of volunteer searchers fanned out Thursday morning, responding to a plea for help from a desperate father of a 14-year-old girl who authorities say was abducted from her bedroom. Frustrated police said they had no good leads.

Police with tracking dogs, helicopters and a new statewide emergency alert system searched for Elizabeth Smart, who vanished early Wednesday.

Police turned their focus toward following up on thousands of tips about her disappearance, but "a lot of things have not panned out," police chief Rick Dinse said Thursday. "We don't feel we're any closer to solving the case,"

As for suspects: "Nobody's been eliminated," he said.

A crowd of about 400 volunteers formed a long line to check in at a search command center at the Shriners Hospital for Children in the wealthy Federal Heights neighborhood, where the family lives.

Organizers said so many people showed up that they ran out of forms for searchers to sign. Teams of volunteers headed out to comb the surrounding neighborhoods and the Wasatch Mountain foothills.

A $250,000 reward for her safe return was offered. The reward was initially $10,000, but donations from the community boosted the fund, Dinse said.

National TV plea

Elizabeth's parents went on national TV networks Thursday to renew their plea for their daughter's return.

"This person, whoever he is, I don't think he knows what he's doing," Elizabeth's father, Edward, said on NBC's "Today" show. "She's just the sweetheart in our family and we just want her back."

Police believe the intruder forced open a window somewhere in the house -- though not in the bedroom where the girl and her 9-year-old sister slept -- at about 1 a.m. Wednesday. The parents and other children also were home and sleeping. The family has six children in all.

The assailant was described as white with dark hair and wearing a tan denim-type jacket and a white baseball cap. He is about 5 foot 8 inches tall and was soft-spoken, the sister told police.

Police said he brandished a small, black handgun and told the younger girl her sister would be harmed if the alarm was raised. Elizabeth was wearing red pajamas, and the man let her take a pair of shoes, police said.

No ransom demand had been received as of Thursday morning, police said.

The assailant didn't call the victim by name, and he didn't appear to know his way around the house, the sister told police. No neighbors reported anything suspicious.

Because of the man's threat, the younger girl waited several hours before alerting her parents, which would have given the abductor time to get well away from the area, police spokesman Dwayne Baird said.

"He could be in the Midwest, he could be Los Angeles or San Francisco," Baird said. "Sometimes they take them around the corner of the house, sometimes they take them overseas."

Police were investigating recently paroled sex offenders and contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. A $10,000 reward was announced by Mayor Rocky Anderson.

"If the perpetrator is watching, we want him to know that he will be brought to justice. But that certainly he will fare better if he will demonstrate some semblance of compassion and return this young girl to her family," Anderson said.

The Smarts' home is for sale, listed for $1.19 million, and police were trying to interview potential buyers or contractors who may have had recent access to the house.

Baird said investigators were trying to determine whether any neighbors had surveillance cameras that might have caught anything on videotape. Officers also searched the family's computer to see if Elizabeth had had contact with any strangers online, but her father said she doesn't use the Internet.

"This was not a purely random act. He'd have to know that she lived there," said Wes Galloway, victims' advocate for Salt Lake City police.

On Wednesday, the search expanded hour by hour and by evening was considered a nationwide search.

Edward Smart said a neighboring family had been the target of a foiled kidnapping plot 10 years ago, so he ran to their home and told the parents, "Please go check your children."

The blond girl, who graduated from middle school Tuesday, is 5-foot, 6-inches tall and weighs about 105 pounds. Friends described her as sweet and shy and said she was an accomplished harp player and a good athlete. About 350 people attended a prayer vigil for her Wednesday night.

Elizabeth's disappearance was the first use of Utah's Emergency Alert System. It was created in April to quickly broadcast information about an abducted child.