Week 2 Search for Haleigh

Please post important events that happened in week 2 of the search or investigation

Feb 16th 11 AM http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/new...s_search_heavily_wooded_area_for_missing_girl

snip~SATSUMA, Fla. - Search teams with the Putnam County Sheriff's Office are searching deep in the woods in a secluded area of Satsuma for any sign of missing 5-year-old Haleigh Cummings.

Nearly 60 vehicles associated with the search are at the location. The exact location has been kept private. The SWAT Team and a mounted patrol are also assisting in the search for the girl.

Texas based Equusearch has pulled out of the search for Haleigh, after volunteers planned to back their bags Monday evening.

Investigators say they are optimistic that they will find Haleigh alive, and they are frustrated that their searches so far have not turned up anything.

Ground teams will be called off after checking two different areas on Monday. Crews will remain on stand-by if they are needed.~ end snip

Feb 17 10 AM http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/local/021709Neighborhood_canvass_conducted_for_missing_girl

snip~SATSUMA, Fla. - Investigators from the Putnam County Sheriff's Office said they utilized federal, state and local officers Monday night in a neighborhood canvass to find missing 5-year-old Haleigh Cummings.

In a news conference Tuesday morning, investigators said they came up with several good leads last night. They also said they conducted a vehicle checkpoint in the area which is an in-house protocol that detectives and administrators train for in cases of missing children.~ end

FEB 18th 8 AM http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/local/021809Tipsters_say_girlfriends_story_not_true

snip~SATSUMA, Fla. - Putnam County Sheriff's investigators said they have received a tip that the 17-year-old girlfriend in the case of a missing Satsuma girl was not actually home at the time of the girl's disappearance, which is contrary to what she told detectives.

The girlfriend, Misty Croslin, said she had been sleeping next to 5-year-old Haleigh but when she awoke, the girl was gone. "She was sleeping right next to me," Croslin told the Palatka Daily News. "I can't believe I didn't hear anything," she added.

Haleigh's father, Ronald Cummings, told investigators his daughter was missing when he returned home from work around 3 a.m. Tuesday. Ronald said his girlfriend was awake and frantic that Haleigh was missing from her bed.

Croslin has responded to the allegations by the tipsters and said they are lying. Croslin is adamant that she was there at the home with Haleigh and says no one can say she wasn't there.

Investigators also said Wednesday that $16,000 in rewards have been offered for information leading the discovery of Haleigh.~ end snip

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/18720746/detail.html

snip~PALATKA, Fla. -- After a sixth day of searching for 5-year-old Haleigh Cummings turned up "nothing of significance," authorities said they are close to wrapping up the ground operation and on Sunday moved the command center from the neighborhood to the Putnam County emergency operations center.

Haleigh vanished from her father's mobile home just north of Satsuma within hours of going to bed Monday night. She was reported missing by her father and his girlfriend, who authorities say have cooperated fully with the investigation.~ end

snip~Ryan said that other than a couple of select areas, they were suspending the search and focusing more on the investigation, which was the reason the command center was moved from a trailer in Satsuma to county offices in Palatka, where more telephones and better Internet access would help the investigators processing more than 500 leads that have come in.

"We're just as enthusiastic today about it as we were on day one," Ryan said, while also said that going nearly a week without a sighting or solid lead is frustrating.

"This is not CSI. We cannot wrap it up in an hour. We wish we could," Ryan said. "These men and women are working their tails off."~ end

http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Local/..._ground_search_for_haleigh_to_end_monday.html

snip~Haleigh's father, Ronald Cummings, joined Texas Equusearch's effort over the weekend, riding horseback through some of the wooded areas around his house.

However, on Monday, Tim Miller, the head of Texas Equusearch said they would suspend their volunteer efforts.

Cummings made a plea to Texas Equusearch to continue its efforts to find his daughter.

"This is my child. I don't think anybody else should give up. If I was searching for somebody else's child I wouldn't give up," Cummings told News 13.

Cummings pulled Miller aside to plead for his team to stay, but in the end, Miller told him that he had to leave.

"He was begging for us to stay. But I explained to him that we have other cases. Let's move forward and if something comes up, we'll come back," Miller said.

"Law enforcement is discouraged. Volunteers, I don't know, but I encourage anybody that wants to help look for my daughter to come back and help me look," Cummings said.

Putnam County sheriff's investigators have now moved their command post to the Emergency Operations Center in Palatka.~ end snip

snip~The Sheriff's Office said they have received some 500 tips since Haleigh's disappearance, but said some of those leads have been from people who are trying to get back at someone, for example: "An ex-wife trying to get back at a husband."

Officials said several people have inquired about Chad Reynolds, a sexual predator who disappeared from Marion County. Pape said that although Reynolds is not a person of interest at the present time in Haleigh's disappearance, they are not ruling anything out and want anybody with information about Reynolds' whereabouts to call law enforcement.~ end

http://www.news4jax.com/news/18725807/detail.html

snip~Crystal Sheffield, Haleigh's mother, also hoped search efforts will continue.

"I feel like they should stay expand the search," Sheffield said. "They need to search other areas, but I do think they should stay."

Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent Dominic Pape confirmed that efforts to find Haleigh have not diminished, just entered a new phase.

"We will continue searching until she is recovered," Pape said. "We will search any place in this county and outside this country if we get a valid lead that says we need to be there."~end

Officials do not know what Haleigh was wearing"

http://www.wesh.com/news/18729399/detail.html

snip~PALATKA, Fla. -- Authorities updated the Amber Alert for Haleigh Cummings on Tuesday, because they no longer know what clothes she was wearing when she disappeared a week ago.

Earlier, investigators said the 5-year-old girl was wearing a pink shirt, but that shirt has been located. Now, officials do not know what clothing the girl was wearing when she was reported missing from her Putnam County home on Feb.~end

snip~At a 4 p.m. news conference, investigators would make no comment about the pink shirt.

At the county's emergency operations center in Palatka, officials have fielded hundreds of calls from people who believe they may have a clue to Haleigh's whereabouts.

At a news briefing on Tuesday, Putnam County Sheriff's Office Capt. Steve Rose said authorities are following several good leads they received while canvassing the neighborhood where Haleigh vanished one week ago.~end

http://m.firstcoastnews.com/news.jsp?key=165580&rc=lo

snip~SATSUMA, FL -- Donald Bard remembers the phone call early last Tuesday morning that woke him up.

His wife Phyllis answered the call.

"We were sleeping and then we received a phone call, the automated phone call that Haleigh Cummings was missing in our neighborhood," said Phyllis Bard.

The Bard's recognized the name right away.

"The home where Haleigh was taken from belonged to my parents," said Phyllis.

It sits right next door to her own home, and Phyllis began renting it out a few years ago after her father died of diabetes complications and her mother died in a car crash 80 days later.

The Bard's first met Haleigh's father, Ron Cummings, last August.

Phyllis says, "They first moved next door to us, and then they needed a bedroom for each of the children he said, and so he asked to rent that house and we rented that to him in November."

She's an adorable little girl," says Phyllis. "Just adorable. She would come over when I was hanging clothes on the line, and I would see the two of them out in the yard playing and she's just, what can I say, a beautiful, adorable little girl. It just breaks my heart that all this has happened."

The Bard's say, almost one week later, it's still so hard to believe. The FDLE Command Center is just yards from their front door, and Monday night, the Putnam County Sheriff's Office teamed up with the Florida Highway Patrol to set up a another roadblock outside the neighborhood.

Sgt. Joseph Wells of the Putnam County Sheriff's Office said, "It's just a general set of questions. Were they down here last week, and then if yes, a few more questions."

"We might find that there's a paper delivery or a gas delivery company or something that comes and goes on this day and time and we'd just like to know who was down here and maybe did they see anything."~end

http://www.wftv.com/news/18729752/detail.html

snip~PUTNAM COUNTY, Fla. -- Eyewitness News has learned that Putnam County commissioners will be looking for financial help from the state and federal governments because of the search for Haleigh.

From overtime and fuel, to equipment costs, Putnam County Sheriff Jeff hardy said the search has taken a toll on the sheriff's office budget.

Hardy said assistance from outside agencies helped, but the county still has a bottom line. He met with commissioners Monday to discuss other possibilities for funding.

"He told me that at some point they were going to have to come to us they thought because they would have exhausted their budget with what they have," said Putnam County Commissioner Nancy Harris.~end

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/amberalerts/news-article.aspx?storyid=131562&catid=295

snip~SATSUMA, FL -- About ten years ago, a different family rented the double wide trailer where Haleigh Cummings lives.

Dr. Jesse Smallwood, a minister, used to live there with his family. He's now in Georgia.

First Coast News called him Tuesday to ask him what he remembers about the home.

Smallwood had no idea his former home was now at the center of the news stories he'd been watching.

Smallwood told First Coast News, "We've been watching it on TV, and we've been saying, 'Boy, that looks so familiar. That looks just like the house that we used to live in.'"

That blue double wide is the place he used to live in around 2000 and 2001 while he worked at a local church.

Smallwood remembered the house and said its floors were noisy. He said if someone was walking inside, he could hear them even if they were on the other side of the house.

"Someone could not carry the child out of that house unless someone was in a drunken stupor, and not hear that child being taken from that house," Smallwood said.~ snip

snip~However, Tuesday Misty Croslin, Haleigh's father's girlfriend, talked about the lock. She lived in the house and was the last to see Haleigh.

She said Haleigh and Haleigh's little brother "could reach [the lock] but they couldn't unlock it because it was hard."

Croslin also said Ronald Cummings, Haleigh's father, checked the locks before he left for work.

Beyond the lock, Smallwood says the way the home is tucked into the woods makes it a perfect place for someone to snatch a child.

"You could park down into the trees and walk right up," Smallwood explained. "If you were going to abduct someone, all you would have to do is sit back there and no one would see you."

Smallwood is still shocked that the place he called home is now a place of interest in an investigation into a missing little girl.~end snip

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/news-article.aspx?storyid=131632&catid=3

snip~SATSUMA, FL -- The mother, father and grandmother of Haleigh Cummings made a swift visit to the Putnam County Sheriff's Office Wednesday afternoon.

Marie Griffis, Haleigh's grandmother, told First Coast News that deputies had told her to pick up Crystal Sheffield, Haleigh's mother, and take her to the Sheriff's Office.

Haleigh's father, Ronald Cummings, was taken there by the lead detective in the case.

The flurry of activity came hours after a news conference where investigators announced little, except the tip about Misty Croslin not being at the house when Haleigh vanished.~end

http://www.wesh.com/news/18743397/detail.html

snip~SATSUMA, Fla. -- The Putnam County Sheriff's Office held its daily news conference at 3 p.m. Thursday.

Sheriff Jeff Hardy said that the sheriff's department arrested a sexual predator, Timothy Loucakis, 50. He said Loucakis has not been tied to the disappearance of Haleigh Cummings, but he does live about a mile from her Satsuma home. Loucakis is monitored by GPS, and the records show that he was not at Haleigh's house on the day of her disappearance. Hardy also said the sheriff's office is not ruling anyone out in the case.~end

snip~A tipster said Haleigh was seen at a Carrabas restaurant in Knoxville, Tenn., with several people acting suspiciously and trying to hide their faces.

Meanwhile, Haleigh's father had little comment to the media during a family news conference earlier Thursday regarding the questioning of his girlfriend, Misty Croslin.

A recent tip in the investigation suggested that Croslin was not home when Haleigh disappeared. Croslin told police she put Haleigh to bed the night before she went missing and was home the entire time. Haleigh's paternal great grandmother said the tip is not true.~ end

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/news-article.aspx?storyid=131661&catid=3

snip~SATSUMA, FL -- Family members of Ronald Cummings say he got into a fight with another man over a gun one day before his daughter disappeared.

A relative told First Coast News Cummings accused the other man of stealing a gun. The relative could not remember the name of the man or where the fight happened.

The relative said the man disappeared the next day and the gun was found in a ditch.

No word on the type of gun, but on the night Haleigh disappeared, Cummings told responding deputies he had a 9 mm Beretta handgun and would kill the person who had taken his child.~ end

http://www.wftv.com/news/18748531/detail.html

snip~PUTNAM COUNTY, Fla. -- The search for missing 5-year-old Haleigh Cummings is in its tenth day. Eyewitness News has learned that a car was taken into custody by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but they are not revealing where or when it was taken.

The Putnam County Sheriff's Office will follow up on more tips Thursday. Each day more tips and leads come into the sheriff's office.

"There was a tip earlier on which we had processed for evidence. But we do not want to get into any of the details on that, but it was processed by FDLE," said Dominick Pape of the FDLE. "At this point in time, we don't want to give out any more information in reference to that vehicle."

Detectives were tight-lipped when it came to giving detailed information on clues and tips that they're getting. They said releasing specifics could jeopardize the investigation.~end

http://www.wftv.com/news/18748531/detail.html

snip~Annette Sykes is Haleigh's great grandmother. She said people should be searching for the little girl and not shifting the focus to Misty.

"I know everybody makes a big deal, she's only 17 and that's true, but she's a lot more mature than a lot of people that I have seen and that I know that are 25 and 30," Sykes said.

Sykes remembers seeing Haleigh hours before she was abducted.

"She was sitting on the front porch when we drove up and junior was just sitting up there with a plate in the lap eating," she said.

The sheriff's office also continues to talk to Haleigh's father. Eyewitness News was there when Ronald Cummings got into the front seat of a detective's car Wednesday~snip