It has been a month since a young boy with a toothy smile, wire-rimmed glasses and cruelly ironic CSI T-shirt seemingly vanished into thin air from his small rural school on the outskirts of Portland.
In the four weeks since Kyron Horman, age 7, disappeared from the halls of Skyline Elementary School on the morning of June 4, thousands of dedicated searchers, law enforcement members, concerned parents and thousands of others watching the search unfold on TV and online have hoped and prayed he would be found.
Thousands upon thousands of tips poured in to investigators. Every nook and cranny around the school was searched and re-searched. The metro area has been plastered with Missing posters bearing Kyrons visage. Divers dove area waterways and found nothing.
The search and investigation into Kyron Hormans disappearance has cost Multnomah County about $300,000 so far, with no arrests and no discovery of the 7-year-old since he vanished from Skyline School on June 4.
Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton said all but one of his seven detectives are working on the case with another 14 investigators from other agencies. They are chasing down leads that come from the tip line as well clues gleaned from interviews with community members.
But as Kyrons disappearance hits the four-week anniversary and costs mount for the cash-strapped county, Staton could not say whether an arrest or resolution is coming any time soon -- nor how long the office can afford to sustain the effort.
Multnomah County's sheriff said the criminal investigation into missing 7-year-old Kyron Horman had not stalled Friday and he maintained there are no persons of interest or suspects in the boy's disappearance.
Kyron disappeared from Skyline School after an early-morning school science fair on June 4. Since then, investigators have developed 2,877 valid leads and covered 60 percent of them, according to Sheriff Dan Staton.
Staton said there's no evidence to lead them to believe anything other than Kyron being still alive.
He said "everyone is a person of interest" and that, although there is no evidence suggesting a stranger may be involved, investigators have not "completely ruled it out."
Revealing several eye-popping statistics, Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton today held a news conference to update reporters on the ongoing search for missing 7-year-old Kyron Horman.
Statons overall message was this: Law enforcement is running on the assumption that Kyron is still alive, and investigators are determined to find him after four weeks.
This is not an investigation that is stalled, Staton said. We have the potential to still bring him home.
About those statistics Staton said there are now 20 detectives working the case 24/7. That includes the sheriffs office as well as the FBI and other agencies, Staton said.
There have been 2,877 valid leads and about 60 percent of them have been covered. Each lead takes detectives in a new direction, making it difficult to pursue the remaining leads faster, he said.
"Everyone is a person of interest," Staton said in response to questions about any specific individuals.
Staton added that there were no "serial patterns" that indicated a threat to the community.
Staton called the investigation "unique," in the fact that it involved interviews from so many children, parents and school staff.
Sheriff: 'Everyone is a person of interest' in Kyron case
Story Published: Jul 2, 2010 at 3:05 PM PDT
Asked whether investigators have an persons of interest in the case, Station said "Everyone is a person of interest. We have not named any suspects at this time."
Helen Jung and Kate Mather, staff writers for The Oregonian, intererviewed Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton on this morning about the ongoing search for Kyron Horman. Here is a transcript of the interview:
Jung: "Well I guess if we could first start by talking about the scope of the investigation. If you can give us an idea of how many people and what kind of resources you have dedicated to this effort and what kind of cost that is?"
Staton: "Right now the number of resources versus when we started the initial phases of looking for Kyron, up to this point, obviously we've reduced them down because the scope of the investigation has changed significantly. Initially we had approximately between 35 and 40 search and rescue groups from around the state of Oregon, some from Washington, some from Northern California, that supported our effort in looking for Kyron and we employed them along with our own search and rescue groups. The total base initially -- during the first five days of the search we had approximately 562 searchers initially. Then that significantly increased and we were up to about 1,200 searchers until we had completed all aspects of the search at that point.
"All but one of his seven detectives are working on the case with another 14 investigators from other agencies, he said. They are chasing leads that come from the tip line as well as clues gleaned from interviews with community members.
The investigation hasnt stalled, Staton said in an interview with The Oregonian. As it progresses you need to have enough information to do the things that you should be doing. Weve gotten information, weve closed certain avenues that were opened up through sources that came in, new potential sources have come in, were going to continue to investigate.
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