FL - Sarah Lunde, 13, murdered, Ruskin, 9 April 2005

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You know I'm at the point right now that I just want to slam my head against a wall and say GET ME OUT OF FLORIDA FAST!!:(

Thanks for posting this story Cinnamon Girl...I had not read or seen anything about it, however I don't watch the local news (something about newscasters that grates on my nerve...I did watch it on Monday to see what they said about the Lunsford news conference) My husband reads the Tribune from front to back daily, guess I'm gonna have to put him on the mission to make me alert to missing/abused children cases and sex offender news.

I just cannot believe this...so many things in that story make my blood boil! From the 17 yr old brother who left when Sarah asked him to get her something to eat, and stayed out until 4am...to the mother who comes home and "assumes" her daughter is staying with a friend but doesn't check until Monday morning??!! Someone comes home, finds the door wide open, the girl missing and nobody thinks anything of it? Some people really do live different lives from most of us :confused:

I pray that she returns safely

http://www3.fdle.state.fl.us/MCICSearch/Flyer.asp?ID=11645
 
So the older brother last saw Sarah at 9 p.m. Saturday evening, left the house and returned at 4 a.m. Sunday morning. At that time the front door was open and Sarah was gone. But the mom didn't realize Sarah was missing until Monday morning when she wasn't at school?

I hope Sarah is ok. I wonder where the mom was all this time?

imo
 
It doesn't mention whether anyone of the other brothers was at home though..you'd assume they were.
 
Where a red flag has went off in my head is this child went on a church youth group for a weekend and her mother went away thinking her daughter wasnt' to be home until Sunday eve yet this child got home around 9pm Saturday I just don't believe the youth group that had plans to gone until Sunday eve would return them home a day early without notifing a family member as to why they were returning early somthing isn't right here IMHO. It sounds like this child has had a rough life.
 
I'm sure the LE has checked with the church youth group leaders to make sure the timeline for the trip. Sheriff Gee said on a news report that there are other circumstances to believe that there may have been foul play. He won't say anymore than that. I like Sheriff Gee...he handled a case for me once before he was sheriff. Very caring sort of man it seems, much like Dawsy. Out of the 25 sex offenders in the area 2 are absconded.

Some eerie parallels in this and the Lunsford case, both disappearing at night, both having returned from a church outing.

Ruskin is a more rural part of Hillsborough County...a lot of the migrant workers live down around that area (not saying they should be suspect) It is an area where people live different lives than most of us, paycheck to paycheck struggling to get by.
 
There aren't enough details in that story to tell what happened. When did the mother first learn the daughter actually came home on Saturday, and why did she do that, and was there ANY food in the house or when the brother never returned, was she more or less forced to wander out to a store or something to get dinner.

And as others have said, where was the 16 year old brother?

Prayers they find her. I guess the cops know the details, the media just isn't reporting them.
 
It does state in this story that she came home unexpectedly on Saturday night. I don't know where she was and how she came home, but I do know that if I am chaperoning our church youth group we will not just let a child leave unless a parent has given us permission or is there to pic them up. We take EVERY step available to make sure the children are safe. I'm not clear on where the mother was when she came home and why she didn't know until Monday morning.

Sheriff Gee believes this is not a runaway situation. I sure home he is wrong.
 
OK..this one clears some of the questions up:

http://news.tbo.com/news/MGBRTTE3H7E.html

The mom was out of town over the weekend and didn't get home until Saturday night. Understandable...she thought Sarah was at a church trip so why would she be worried. When she returned the older brother said she came home but left again. I guess he wasn't concerned that she left AFTER midnigh t:doh:

The mother ASSUMED Sarah went to stay with a friend....*sigh*

Sarah returned to her home on 30th Street Southeast on Saturday evening from an overnight trip with her church to Apopka. She was last seen when her adult brother left to get something to eat shortly after midnight, Gee said.

Her brother came home at 4 a.m. and found the front door of the family's mobile home open and Sarah gone, Gee said.

Sarah's mother, Kelly May, was out of town over the weekend and returned Sunday night. May's son told her Sarah had been home but left again. May, 40, thought the teen was staying at a friend's home, Gee said.

On Monday morning, May began calling Sarah's friends. When she couldn't locate her, May called the middle school and discovered her daughter had not shown up for classes that morning.


Yes, in this case I think the mother should have acted sooner...not waited until 1pm the following day to make the call to the police. I guess some people really don't worry too much
 
A large-scale search resumes after daybreak in the Hillsborough County community of Ruskin for a missing
13-year-old girl.

Sarah Lunde has run away from home before. But she's never been gone this long.

If you have any information on the whereabouts of Sarah Lunde please contact the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office at 813-247-8200 or 911.

If you would like to volunteer and help with the search, call 813-247-0455.

http://www.wtsp.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=13253
 
KTRE-TV - Lufkin/Nacogdoches, TX - Authorities search for another missing Florida girl

Authorities are also interviewing the girl's father, who lives about 50 miles away.


Tampabay: Deputies search for missing girl

Sarah's father Richard Nelson Lunde hasn't been in the picture for 10 years, said Carter. Lunde lives in Zephyrhills and works as an electrician, according to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement report. Lunde has an arrest record dating to 1979 on charges including bigamy, harassment, domestic violence and writing worthless checks.

*************************************************************

I hope that my bad feeling about this is wrong. I am praying that this girl will be found safely very soon.
 
Teams Continue Search For Missing Girl - from TBO.com

Authorities are continuing to question a known sexual predator who was a friend of Sarah's family.

Another known sexual offender was arrested in connection with an unrelated incident in Apollo Beach Tuesday night.

Latimer said David Onstott, 36, no address given, was involved in a heated argument at a home at 768 Grand Cayman Blvd. Authorities said Onstott threatened another man with a screwdriver.

He was arrested without incident on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and is being held in the Orient Road Jail, officials said. Onstott is one of the 24 sexual predators registered in the area and questioned by investigators about Sarah's disappearance, officials said. He was one of two who had contact with Sarah's family in the past, authorities said.
 
If you were going to be gone for the weekend and your daughter was only going away over night. First wouldn't you call her to make sure she got home ok? Then wouldn't you find out where she was going to be staying? She is only 13, if she was staying home what was her brother doing out leaving her home alone untill 4AM? I just find this whole thing so strange, did the mother not leave a phone # where she could be contacted? I mean If my son where to come home the door wide open my daughter gone the first thing he would do is call me to see if she had told me where she was going. And if the Mother came home Sunday night why did she wait till Monday to call her friends? Something really hinky here. JMHO
 
Sheriff's office gets help as search for missing teen expands

Drawing lessons from the Jessica Lunsford abduction and murder, detectives immediately focused on local sex offenders as part of their investigation. Sheriff David Gee said he even got pointers from the man who led the search for the Citrus County 9-year-old.

"I actually spoke to [Citrus County] Sheriff Dawsy this afternoon about this case and compared notes a little bit about the process and got some good advice from him," Gee said late Monday. "It is eerily similar; I just hope it does not have the same conclusion."

... While all of those offenders have or will be questioned, one of them is of particular concern to investigators: David Onstott has been previously been linked to the family...
 
TisHerself said:
I just find this whole thing so strange, did the mother not leave a phone # where she could be contacted? I mean If my son where to come home the door wide open my daughter gone the first thing he would do is call me to see if she had told me where she was going.
Click to expand...
That part is so disturbing. Why wasn't a call placed to the mom when she was first discovered missing? And if not then, then how is it that she came home on Sunday evening, and none of her sons mentioned that she was missing?

It sounds like these kids might have had a lot of "freedom". Apparently the 16 year-old was out when Sarah got home as was her 20 year-old brother - did they ever come home that night? The 17 year-old brother was out until 4 A.M., knowing that his 13 year-old sister was there alone when he left. And all of this while Mom was away for the weekend. It sounds like it may have been normal for them each to do their own thing, and not necessarily check in with each other. The fact that the mom didn't seem alarmed by Sarah being gone when she got back, (by what we've heard so far), and just assumed she was spending the night with a friend makes it seem likely that they lived separate lives under the same roof.
 
ABC News: Sex Offender Link Feared in Florida Girl's Disappearance

"She was found missing when her older brother came home. He had gone out for the night. He came back home, the front door was wide open; she was not around," Gee said.

The wife of Sarah's pastor, Sherry Cook, said her son went to pick Sarah up for Sunday school.

"He was told that someone had already picked her up. And he came to church and found that she had not been picked up," said Cook.

(If the brother discovered the door wide open & Sarah missing when he got back at 4 A.M., who was it that told the pastor's son later on Sunday morning that Sarah had already been picked up for Sunday school when in actuality, she had already been missing for hours? If this was a different brother, then he obviously hadn't been informed that Sarah was missing so apparently the brother that discovered her gone didn't share that information with the other siblings.)

"Although there have been some cases in years past where she would be missing for a small amount of time, where she would leave, get upset with her parent, generally just for a few hours, at this time it appears to be out of character for her," Gee said. "There are also other circumstances that we used to believe that there is evidence of foul play."

(Let's keep this poor child in our prayers. How very truly sad.)
 
Who told the boy that someone had already picked her up for church, I wonder? If it was the OTHER brother, this could all patch together and still be believable, if he answered the door, went to her room and she was gone he could have assumed she'd already been picked up.

Otherwise, it looks really really fishy that someone would lie like that.
 
Help me to understand why some parents take off and leave their kids at home by themselves, unsupervised? I'm sorry, but some teens need supervision. This mother didn't know her daughter was missing until Monday? And please help me to understand these women who date men who have a history of sexual offenses? Do they honestly think that's going to change? And then they let them around their children??? They should be held accountable. I'm sorry, I'm tired of hearing about this. What about the guy up in So. Dakota who kidnapped, raped, and murdered the 8 yr old granddaughter of the woman he was dating? What's the story up there anyway? Why did the grandmother leave her with this guy overnight?
I know she was visiting the grandmother, but why did the grandmother go out and not come home until the next day? Was she out partying? Holy crap!!! :furious: :furious: :furious: :furious: I'm so freaking sick and tired of these women who allow their children to be around men they know to have a "history" and then to leave small, innocent children with sex offenders! WTF?
 
KK - it's not really clear the mom intended to leave her home alone - the stories state she came home unexpectedly early - (maybe she was bored, maybe the thing ended unexpectedly early, or the info from the church was unclear, or her ride had an emergency, who knows). I think she wasn't expected home until Sunday.
 
This story keeps changing. NOW, the brother states he was home at 2 a.m., NOT 4 a.m., and that he noticed a bottle of beer on the table.

Are the cops purposely releasing incorrect info, or is the media just botching it, or is the brother completely changing his story? Maybe some of each.

http://www.tampabays10.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=13280
 
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