CAMDEN, Mississippi (AP) — The FBI has joined the search for a missing Madison County toddler, and authorities say they’re still not sure what happened to her.
Police began looking for 2-year-old Myra Lewis on Saturday afternoon after family members realized she was missing. She may have been gone from her rural Camden home for hours by that time.
An Amber alert was issued Sunday, and family members said Monday they believed she was kidnapped. But Madison County Sheriff Randy Tucker said Tuesday at a news conference that authorities aren’t sure.
“Until we can prove or disprove one or the other, we’ve still got to consider every possibility. She may have wandered off or been abducted, we just don’t know what (happened) at this point,” he said.
Tucker said authorities have searched 4 square miles around the family home, using dogs, aircraft and more than 300 people.
“The Sheriff’s Department and multiple agencies, including the FBI and Mississippi Highway Patrol. you name it, they’ve all been here for us,” Tucker said. “We have not given up.”
The sheriff urges people to contact authorities with tips “no matter how insignificant.”
Since Lewis disappeared, temperatures overnight have dropped into the 20s, and have hovered in the 30s and low 40s during the day.
“We fully expect a positive outcome,” Tucker said. “We need to get Myra home, and again we want to stress to everyone we need your help, the family needs your help and we appreciate your calls.”
On Tuesday, FBI agents carried brown paper bags of evidence out of the family’s home.
“At far as what was in the bags, obviously we’ll start where the child was last seen and we have evidence response folks who are going to that location and recovering evidence and all of this is a collective effort to discover where little Myra is,” FBI Special Agent Dan McMullen said. “I’m not going to talk about anything specific with regard to the investigation.”
