If you read news reports of the disappearance of David Adams, you will read that David was walking home from a friend’s house. That friend was my younger brother. My brother would have been the last person to see him before he disappeared. I was standing nearby saying goodbye.
I just thought I would clarify some things. I was 9 years old that the time, and my memory may be fuzzy, but there are some things I can remember quite well. Jill and Rob have done a great job telling their stories, but not all of the details are quite right, and Jill makes reference to some things that Tru Rose got wrong.
David was not hiking on Tiger Mountain when he disappeared. He was walking home from my family’s house, which is off of Tiger Mountain Road, so named because it runs near the base of the mountain.
There were stories of David walking out to Tiger Mountain Road, meeting a girlfriend there, and running away. The stories were never verified, and they seem highly unlikely, especially for an 8 year old boy. Where would he have gone? How would he have traveled without being seen? How would he have supported himself? Why did no girlfriend ever speak up? No young girls in the area disappeared at the same time, so he definitely was not traveling with a local girlfriend.
David could not have drowned in 15 mile creek and his body washed away. As Jill pointed out, the water was less than a foot deep. Even during the spring runoff there was not enough current to wash a body away. The bridge David crossed to get home was wide enough to accommodate a truck, so it is doubtful that he would have fallen off. The only traffic that crossed the bridge was my family, or visitors, and neither was using the road at that time, so there was no reason for him not to walk right down the center of the bridge. If he had fallen into the creek, his body would have been found. The creek was a very popular place for neighborhood kids to play.
If a body could have washed down the creek, it would have passed through several back yards, into Issaquah Creek, and through the downtown area. Assuming it could have made it past the salmon hatchery, where the water is diverted into the ponds, it would have eventually wound up in Lake Sammamish, where it would have been found, had it not been found long before it got that far.
My brother and I explored every square inch of the forest while we lived there. There was no quicksand anywhere. Some of the area near the creek was marshy, but those areas were not on his route home, and had he gotten lost there, the search dogs would have found him. We never found any coal mine shafts in the area. There was an old well near the Adams’s house, but had he fallen in, he would have been found. It was David’s older brother who showed me where the well was.
Our house was not within sight of the Adams’s house. David would need to walk almost 1/4 to get home. Most of that is along roads, and the rest cross country for a short distance and along two short trails. Or he could have taken a slightly longer route that would be almost entirely road walking. He did take the first short trail that bypassed our driveway and took him to the road down near the creek. News reports say that my brother walked with him down to the bridge, but I don’t remember seeing him go farther than the start of the first trail.
If David had lost his way or gotten hurt in the forest, he would have been found. The only difficult part of the route was finding the second trail that would take him from our road to his. Had he found the trail, someone in my family would have found him within a day or two, as we used it all the time on our way to and from the school bus stop. If he had missed the trail, he would have wound up in someone’s back yard. He would not have been found by hikers. The area where he got lost was privately owned lots. He would have been found by the search dogs, or by a neighborhood kid playing in the woods.
Just to give you a mental picture: Tiger Mountain Road runs roughly east/west. 240[SUP]th[/SUP] (the road that the Adams’s lived on) runs north off of Tiger mountain road. I believe the Adams’s house was the third house from the corner. My family lived on 241[SUP]st[/SUP], which was a private dirt road also running north off of Tiger Mountain Road. There were three families living along 241[SUP]st[/SUP]. (Maybe two. I don’t remember if the third house had been built yet.) Our house was the farthest from Tiger Mountain Road, about 1/4 mile as one drives down 241[SUP]st [/SUP]and down our driveway. There was a short trail that one could take from 241[SUP]st[/SUP] to our house that shortened that distance slightly by bypassing the driveway.
David walked down this trail, which would have taken him to 241[SUP]st[/SUP] just above the bridge over the creek. After crossing the bridge, he would follow 241[SUP]st[/SUP] up the hill on the other side. When the road leveled off, he had two ways to get home. He could follow 241[SUP]st[/SUP] out to Tiger Mountain Road, then walk along Tiger Mountain Road to 240[SUP]th[/SUP], or he could look for a break in the trees that indicated a trail that would take him across an undeveloped lot to 240[SUP]th[/SUP]. The land along 241[SUP]st[/SUP] in the area of the trail was mostly cleared of trees, possibly to accommodate horses. This would require a short cross country walk through brush to reach the more heavily treed area along 240[SUP]th[/SUP]. The trail would take him through the trees to 240[SUP]th[/SUP]. Then he would walk along 240[SUP]th[/SUP] to his home.
There really wasn’t any way to get lost, and certainly not in any place where searchers would not find him, or neighborhood kids or developers would not eventually run across a body.
To clarify some questions that were asked on another forum:
David was seen leaving our house by myself, my brother and my father, who was watching from a kitchen window. As far as I know, there were no other witnesses. Unless my brother accompanied him down to the creek, and I don’t remember him doing so, there is no way of verifying that he even made it as far as the end of the trail down to the road near the creek. The searches started from our house, so the dogs would have been following a scent trail that originated from our house. If several of the dogs followed David’s scent to a particular neighbor’s house, it is very likely that it is because David took that route, though dogs are known to pick up scents other than the person they are searching for. The dogs were trained German Shepherd search dogs that were handled by volunteers working closely with the King County Sherriff’s department. The volunteers were all members of The German Shepherd Search Dogs of Washington State.
