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Volunteers search in rain for Florida girl

Lead from store's surveillance camera fails to pan out


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Volunteers line up in the rain before beginning a search Sunday.
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Volunteers join police in search for 9-year-old Florida girl.
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(CNN) -- More than 400 volunteers turned out Sunday in pouring rain to help law enforcement officers search for 9-year-old Jessica Marie Lunsford, who was last reported seen Wednesday evening.

Joined by search dogs and by officers on horseback and four-wheel vehicles, the searchers spent the day searching the rural area within a three-mile radius of the house where the girl was last seen.

A church was serving as a staging area for searchers. One group drove two hours from Orlando to help.

"It could be anybody's daughter, you know," one volunteer said.

In advance of the stormy weather overnight, a helicopter used heat-sensitive radar to search.

Investigators said Sunday that a girl who appears in an image captured by a convenience store surveillance camera is not Jessica.

The Citrus County Sheriff's Department released the image Sunday afternoon and asked the public to help identify the girl pictured. But authorities said later Sunday afternoon that they have identified the two people seen, and they are not related to the girl's case.

"We had a tip that came in after Jessica was discovered missing, from a clerk up here at the convenience store," Citrus County public information officer Rhonda Evan said. "She said the morning that Jessica is believed to have disappeared, she saw a white male in his 20s who entered the store. He had a small boy and a small girl that resembles Jessica with him."

Evan said the girl's family didn't believe the girl in the image was Jessica, "but investigators want to rule this out as any kind of option."

Police are hoping a $25,000 reward posted by Atlanta Braves pitcher Mike Hampton and his wife, Kautia, will lead to information about the girl's whereabouts.

The Hamptons live in Homosassa, a town of about 2,300 on the Gulf Coast about 60 miles north of Tampa, where Jessica lives with her father and grandparents.

Jessica -- who is 4-feet-10-inches tall, weighs 70 pounds and has light brown hair -- was last seen wearing a pink nightgown.

She was last reported seen Wednesday evening by her grandmother. There was no sign of forced entry at the girl's home. However, Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy said the front door of the home had been left unlocked.

He said the only thing missing from the girl's room is a doll, which he would not describe.

Pleas for help

Investigators said they have no concrete evidence that the young girl was abducted.

"It's very frustrating," Dawsy said. "It's a bump above missing, believe me. Missing to me, as, you know, somebody just walks out."

A computer from the family's home is being analyzed, but Dawsy said investigators don't believe her disappearance was connected to the Internet.

At a news briefing Friday, Jessica's father, Mark Lunsford, and grandparents, Ruth and Archie Lunsford, issued a tearful plea for any information about her whereabouts.

"She's just like any other child, she's innocent and she just needs to be home," her father told reporters.

Ruth Lunsford said she had put the girl to bed about 10 p.m.

Jessica's father returned home about 6 a.m. Thursday, after spending the night with his girlfriend.

"When I opened the door to her room she wasn't there," he said.

Angela Bryant, the girl's mother, who lives in Warren County, Ohio, said, "Every night when I close my eyes, I ask God to watch over her, keep her safe."

Mark Lunsford said Bryant has had very little contact with Jessica during the past eight years, and he was "convinced that no family member has anything to do with this."

Dawsy said the FBI interviewed Bryant on Friday.

Dawsy said Saturday that investigators were re-interviewing Jessica's friends and re-examining all the leads they have to see if there is "anything we missed."


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