Family organizes search for missing Va. Tech student

By Rex Bowman

CHARLOTTESVILLE

The family of missing Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington on Wednesday called on volunteers to join them in a three-day "community search party" that will scour Charlottesville for their daughter.

The Texas-based Laura Recovery Center is organizing the Friday-through-Sunday search, and the father of Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted from her Salt Lake City bedroom in June 2002 but was found alive nine months later, arrived in Charlottesville to help the Harringtons promote the search. He called on people to come forward with any helpful information about the whereabouts of Harrington, of Roanoke County.

"There is a girl that is lost out there that needs to be found, and somebody out there, I believe, knows something," Smart said on Wednesday at a press conference near the bridge where Harrington was last seen on Oct. 17.

Morgan Harrington's father, Dan, told a dozen assembled reporters that he had called Smart to help him and his wife, Gil, cope with their daughter's disappearance. Smart, who admitted to occasionally doubting that his daughter would be found alive, nevertheless said he never gave up believing she would return, and he urged the Harringtons to keep believing their 20-year-old daughter will be found.

"People do come back," he said. "Not everyone is lost."

Smart's daughter, Elizabeth, now 21, recently testified that her abductor snatched her from her bed at knifepoint, drugged her, tethered her to a tree and raped her repeatedly during her nine-month ordeal. Her alleged kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, has a competency hearing scheduled later this month.

Harrington disappeared during an Oct. 17 Metallica concert she was attending at the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville. She left her friends to go to a restroom but ended up outside, unable to re-enter. In a conversation on her cell phone, she told her friends she might try to find a ride home with friends in Charlottesville. About 40 minutes later she was seen on the Copeley Road bridge about a quarter of a mile south of the arena. She has not been seen since.

Harrington, who has blue eyes and blond hair, is 5-foot-6 and weighs 120 pounds. She was last seen wearing a black T-shirt with the name of metal band Pantera in tan letters across the front, black tights and black knee-high boots.

At the press conference, Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller was asked if Harrington was intoxicated before she vanished from the concert.

"We're not commenting on what her condition may or may not have been," Geller said.

On Wednesday, Dan Harrington asked that anyone interested in joining the search party attend a meeting at the Cavalier Inn in Charlottesville at 7 p.m. Thursday. Volunteers will be issued vests and will convene on Friday, Saturday and Sunday to search the city, beginning with the immediate area around the arena, he said.

Geller said police have searched the area several times already, but welcome the new search and will be working with volunteers to coordinate the effort.

Geller said State Police have received about 350 calls on the agency’s tip line at 434-352-3467, including calls from as far away as California, Maine and Florida. Investigators are following up each lead, she said. Meanwhile, Metallica has added $50,000 to the reward being offered by the Jefferson Area Crime Stoppers, bringing the total to $150,041.

A gaunt Gil Harrington spoke at the press conference, but not to reporters. She addressed her comments directly to her missing daughter: “Be strong. We are trying to find you. We will never stop. We are trying, Honey. Hang on.”

Multimedia producer Jordan Fifer contributed to this report.