http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/06/still_no_trace_of_kyron_horman.htmlStill no trace of Kyron Horman as police, FBI conclude third day of search
By The Oregonian June 06, 2010,NOELLE CROMBIE, KIMBERLY A.C. WILSON and STUART TOMLINSON
The investigation into the disappearance of Kyron Horman, the bespectacled 7-year-old last seen inside Skyline School on Friday morning, stretches into a fourth day today with the boy's whereabouts still a mystery.
Sunday, as Kyron's family ordered fliers carrying the boy's description and smiling face, authorities continued investigating his disappearance, calling in more than 65 detectives from various police agencies and nearly 60 trained searchers.
"Our basic mission is to bring Kyron home," said Lt. Mary Lindstrand, a spokeswoman for the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office.
Late Sunday, Multnomah County Sheriff Daniel Staton issued a status report and raised the case level to increase public interest and focus. He said additional searches and interviews are planned, but he declined to discuss strategy or specifics of the investigation.
“Given the passage of time and the weather, we are characterizing this case as a missing endangered child,” he said.
Hundreds of Skyline students and their parents streamed into the school throughout the day for interviews with investigators, who wanted to know whether students spotted anything unusual at school Friday.
Police remain stymied as to what happened to the second-grader, described by his grandmother as dreamy, sweet and a bit timid. His stepmother said she last saw him at 8:45 a.m. Friday. She watched him walk toward his classroom after the pair toured the school's science fair.
During police interviews Sunday, a student said he last saw Kyron later that morning near the south entrance to the school. That was the last time the boy was seen, Staton said.
At some point that morning, Kyron's teacher, Kristina Porter, marked the boy as absent. But it wasn't until 3:30 p.m. -- when his stepmother, Terri Moulton Horman, met the school bus -- that she discovered Kyron had been absent from school.
Nora Schreiber, a Skyline parent and volunteer, said the school has three main entrances and one secure exit. Two of the doorways are near the main office and are monitored, while a third on the north side of the school is not. Kyron's classroom is adjacent to that door, which opens onto a rear parking lot.
Schreiber said she and her son, Jacob, 9, were interviewed Sunday by a federal agent. She said she told the agent that Friday was an especially hectic day at Skyline.
"On a normal day, seeing a stranger will make you go, 'Hmm. I wonder who that is?' On such a hectic day as Friday, there was such a lot going on. To tell you the truth, I was focused on looking at the (science) project and helping Jacob fill out his (evaluation) form and not on the faces around me."
Schreiber said Kyron was supposed to perform in the school's talent show at 1 p.m. but she didn't see him there.
Kris Delzell was among those who brought their children to the school for an interview with detectives.
"It's horrific," said Delzell, whose son Andrew, 9, attends the school.
"I hope they find him and that he's OK," her son said.
Counselors will be at Skyline today, said district spokesman Matt Shelby. Overwhelmed students will have access to a "safe room" for additional counseling.
"It's been hard for the students, hard for the parents, hard for the staff," Shelby said. "We're going to try and have as normal a day as we can."
Kyron's family made no public comment Sunday. Terri Horman was on Facebook throughout the day, receiving prayers and well-wishes from dozens of friends and relatives. A Facebook page dedicated to Kyron also was launched.
Investigators said Sunday they haven't turned up signs of foul play. Still, the FBI, which has assigned a sizable, though undisclosed, number of agents to the case, launched its Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team, a group of agents and analysts that specializes in organizing large-scale investigations of child disappearances.
The team's involvement is standard when a child goes missing, said Beth Anne Steele, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Portland field office.
The FBI also called in a Quantico, Va.-based profiler to develop a more complete portrait of Kyron.
"You want to find out what his ... strengths and weaknesses are," said former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt, now a Virginia-based security consultant. "Where would they go? Do they have a tendency to wander off? Do they have a tendency to cry? Have you ever talked to them about what to do if they get lost?
"You are trying to find out everything you can," he said, adding that the FBI's profile will go far beyond a physical description. He said the profiler wants to "find out what might make (the child) vulnerable to a predator."
Van Zandt said authorities tend to deploy lots of police resources in those crucial, early hours after a child goes missing.
"Everybody knows the clock is ticking," he said. "You don't want to hold back any resources. You don't want to refuse to go down any path right now."
The search, which at one point included a National Guard helicopter, will continue today.
The air search, having turned up nothing, ended Saturday. The ground search, which included a detailed grid search of the two miles between Skyline and Kyron's home, relies on volunteers, most of whom need to return to work today, said Sgt. Diana Olsen, coordinator of the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office search and rescue operations.
"We won't even get a quarter of the numbers (of volunteers) we have today," she said Sunday.
She said searchers Sunday made a major push in soggy conditions and hilly terrain to complete their search.
So far, overnight weather conditions have been favorable for surviving if Kyron wandered off.
"It's warm even at night," Olsen said. "If he fell and injured himself, the expectation is he would still be alive."
Skyline is something of a rural island, where residents place tomato starts at the end of driveways with a sign asking $1 per pot on the honor system.
"It's a more urbane version of Mayberry, RFD," said Cindy Banks, who owns a former church across the street from Skyline School on the winding Northwest Skyline Boulevard. "We know our neighbors. We're all asking ourselves how something like this could happen here."
At the Plainview Grocery, just downhill from the school, a flier about the missing boy remains propped against the cash register.
A lunchtime visitor asked owner Dave Linden, "Is this the boy that went missing?"
Linden nodded solemnly. The shopper, a woman wearing a soggy blue fleece jacket, stooped to peer at the boy wearing a proud smile, a photo taken on the day Kyron Harmon went missing:
"Let me take a close look so I know who to look for," she said, before heading to her truck.
