The News Tribune (Tacoma, Washington)
August 17, 2008 Sunday
More help in child abductions
In the past three years, two young girls have gone missing from the streets of Pierce County.
Search parties were launched and investigators assigned to the disappearances. Both girls - 10-year-old
Adre'anna Jackson and 12-year-old Zina Linnik - were later found dead.
Now the county is putting together a team of representatives from the criminal justice community that will be trained to rapidly respond to the next child abduction and assist in the investigation if asked.
"We want to make sure we have every tool available when these types of incidents occur," said Ed Troyer, the team leader and Pierce County sheriff's spokesman.
The 10-member Child Abduction Response Team leaves today for a week of training in San Francisco. The U.S. Department of Justice is paying for the training, airfare, lodging and materials.
The Pierce County contingent will be one of several CART-trained groups throughout the country. If certified by the Justice Department, it will be the only activated and certified team in the state, Troyer said.
The concept was developed after the abduction of an 11-year-old girl in Florida in 2004. Officials working that case discovered they needed trained experts to respond immediately, assist the lead law enforcement agency and bring additional resources to the effort.
The CART training is designed to provide team members with resources and tools that can be useful when a child is abducted. The training includes a tabletop exercise during which the team is evaluated for its response and performance in an abduction scenario.
Pierce County's team is comprised of two sheriff's detectives, a search-and-rescue specialist, a forensics officer, the county's Amber Alert coordinator, two public information officers, a deputy prosecutor, a victim-witness coordinator and a sheriff's supervisor.
Troyer said he's been working on getting a CART team for the county for some time. The effort is tied to the county's Amber Alert planning, which began in 2002. Amber alerts are messages displayed on highway reader boards and broadcast by the media when a child is abducted.
"This is just the natural progression," Troyer said.
Once trained, the team will be able to assist any law enforcement agency that needs help responding to the abduction of a child. The CART team would provide support, pull in other resources and provide expertise to the investigating agency, Troyer said.
"We do not take over the case," he said. "Most of what we will bring is added resources and support that will free up the investigating agency to allocate more manpower towards the investigation."
Law enforcement agencies already might know of some of those resources - such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and a team of retired officers who travel the country helping on abducted children cases - said Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum, a member of the team.
"We should have quicker, easier access to other resources," he said. "It is something that really is needed and it's good training."
Troyer said the hope is that the CART team could be deployed in cases such as those of Adre'anna Jackson and Zina Linnik.
Adre'anna disappeared Dec. 2, 2005, after she left her Lakewood home for school. The fourth-grader never made it to Tillicum Elementary. Her parents reported her missing later that day.
Adre'anna's body was found four months later in an overgrown lot in Lakewood No arrests have been made in the case.
Zina was snatched from an alley near her Tacoma Hilltop home July 4, 2007. Her body was found eight days later.
Earlier this year, Terapon Dang Adhahn pleaded guilty to kidnapping, raping and killing Zina and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release.
Deputy prosecutor Grant Blinn also is a member of the CART team. He's been involved in a handful of child abduction cases in his 12 years on the job.
He was the lead prosecutor in the case against Lisa Ann Platz. Platz was convicted of kidnapping her 9-year-old daughter at gunpoint outside a Lakewood home in 2001, then killing her at a campground in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., after a nine-hour standoff with police. She's serving a life sentence for murder.
"I come across them often enough that I want to make sure I have the tools and resources," Blinn said of child abductions. "These cases don't occur every day, but when they do occur, you need to make sure you act quickly to ensure the best interest of the child."
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