A Little Rock woman says she hopes the next three days will bring her some closure as law enforcement officials began a search for her teenage daughter who went missing more than a year ago.
Laurie Jernigan and her husband, Michael, stood by Tuesday morning as officials began to comb the wooded area of Chalamont Park in west Little Rock for any evidence of Ebby Steppach, their missing daughter.
Steppach, who was 18 when she went missing, was last contacted by phone Oct. 24, 2015, and was reported missing two days later.
Her car was found in the parking lot of the park, which is in the 20600 block of Chalamont Drive, about a week after she disappeared, said Lt. Dana Jackson with the Little Rock Police Department.
Jernigan said the past year has been hellish, and she feels the separation the most while driving, saying she “cries all the way home.” But she's found strength both from her family and from her faith, which she said Steppach also shared.
“I want her to be found, and with the Lord,” Jernigan said. “If she was killed, I know the first eyes she saw were Jesus’."
Jackson said police are still treating Steppach's disappearance as a missing person case and not as a homicide. The investigating detectives, who are in the homicide department, were chosen because they are “my most senior guys,” he said.
Two bloodhounds, which “can smell things you would not believe,” along with 17 officials from Little Rock police and the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children made up the Tuesday morning search party, Jackson said. The area was already examined by the Grant County sheriff’s office last year.
No new evidence prompted the search, he said, but officials wanted to be extra thorough. When asked what police were looking for, Jackson responded that they want to find “anything that can tell us where she’s at.”
“We never forget this case. We’re not going to give up on it,” he added.
Jernigan and her husband are still trying to find more information, and she said she is not going to give up either, a quality she attributes to her daughter.
“I guess that’s how we’re alike,” she said.
Read Wednesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.