I am very happy to see that there have been several articles today on Jaliek. It would be a shame if they stopped the search so soon. May this be the day Jaliek is found.
Hope remains as search wanesPolice chief says he has not given up on finding missing 12-year-old |
GREENWICH — Police have scaled back their search for missing 12-year-old Jaliek Rainwalker. But Greenwich-Cambridge Police Chief George Bell said he has not given up hope of finding him.
“There is still a very active search for Jaliek. We’re going to find him,” Bell said.
But police believe they have exhausted most of their search options within several miles of Rainwalker’s home in Cossayuna, Washington County.
“We’ve taken that town and turned it upside-down and shaken it, and we haven’t found him,” Bell said.
Two weeks ago, as many as 100 police, volunteers and forest rangers combed the woods around Cossayuna and nearby Greenwich looking for the youngster, who was last seen by his adoptive father, Stephen Kerr, on Nov. 1. This week, there are about a dozen authorities involved in a daily search.
While authorities and family won’t officially give up hope of finding him alive, the search has been run as a recovery operation, only during daylight hours and using dogs trained to sniff out cadavers.
“If someone told me they had a good idea of a place where we should look and I felt there was a good possibility, I would put 100 people back to that spot without a doubt,” Bell said.
There are six police investigators working on the case. Kerr and his wife, Jocelyn McDonald, were in the process of undoing their adoption of Rainwalker at the time of his disappearance.
The child, they said, was prone to violent outbursts that frightened his parents and four siblings. The night before he disappeared, he stayed alone with his father at an unoccupied home in Greenwich. The next morning, Kerr awoke and produced a note he said Rainwalker wrote explaining that he no longer wanted to be a burden on his family.
