Overland Park Girl Missing

[Becca]

Missing: Kelsey Smith, Overland Park Teen

http://findkelsey.com/images/kelsey0.jpg

Last Edited: Tuesday, 05 Jun 2007, 8:34 AM CDT
Created: Sunday, 03 Jun 2007, 3:56 PM CDT

Overland Park Police are searching for 18-year-old Kelsey Smith, last seen Saturday night. She was to attend a graduation party but never showed up.


OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- The TIPS Hotline has had about 100 calls in regards to the kidnapping of 18-year-old Kelsey Smith. FOX 4's Kathy Quinn reported that about 25 of those tips have been considered good and police are investigating them.

Volunteers plan to scan area parks on Tuesday and pass out updated fliers.

Monday night, Overland Park police said they had "person of interest" they'd like to question in Kelsey's disappearance. Police are looking for a white man, six feet tall and 175 pounds. He is around 20 years old, has dark hair and goatee. He was dressed in a white T-shirt, black shorts and black Converse tennis shoes.

Smith's family said on Tuesday that surveillance video from Target shows someone forcing Kelsey into her car.

Kelsey Smith disappeared Saturday night as she headed home from the Target store near Oak Park Mall. It was the last place she was seen, wearing a pink tank top and black shorts. She went to Target to buy something for a graduation party but never made it back to her parents' house where she was supposed to meet her boyfriend at 7:20 Saturday night.

Surveillance video from Target appears to show Kelsey leaving without any problem, but investigators did notice one suspicious thing. Instead of turning right for her way home, she turned left.

"We've looked at it certainly and you normally follow a same path that you would and what drew her to turn west instead of going to the east, I don't know, that's something we've asked ourselves too," Jim Weaver with Overland Park Police said.

Two hours later, her car was found across the street in the Macy's parking lot. Police have confirmed there is surveillance video of Kelsey's car, a 1987 silver Buick Regal, being dropped off at that location.

"It was found at Oak Park Mall, unoccupied and we're not quite sure how it got there," said Captain Tom Fredrickson of the Overland Park Police Department.

Whatever has happened to Kelsey has police worried and her family frantic.

"If something happened, she would call, she always does, she always has and for her not to call means that something's happened," Greg Smith, Kelsey's dad, said.

Family, friends and nearly 200 volunteers, some complete strangers to Kelsey, gathered Monday in the parking lot where Kelsey was last seen at 97th and Quivira. They broke into six search parties, spanning out five miles with maps and fliers, hoping to find someone who knows something about Kelsey's disappearance. One of the search party's was led by Kelsey's boyfriend, John Biersmith.

"I just want to thank everybody that took the time out of their day to help us find our daughter," Greg Smith said, fighting back tears.

Police said Kelsey's cell phone and ATM card haven't been used since she disappeared.

Her car was towed to the Johnson County Crime Lab. Detectives will check it for fingerprints, hair and DNA, but to find Kelsey they believe their best clue will come from an eyewitness who saw something.

"I mean if somebody does have her, I love my girl, please let her come home," Greg Smith said.

Kelsey Smith graduated from Shawnee Mission West just a few days ago. She plans to attend Kansas State University and study vet medicine.

If you have any information concerning Kelsey Smith, please contact the Overland Park Police Department at (913) 895-6300.

[dday]

i fucking hate stories like this.....reminds me of when i was living up there and that young girl from Leawood was murdered at the pool...very, very sad..

all the best Kelsey!

[Becca]

The thing that really freaks me out is that this happened at 7pm...practically broad daylight at this time of year. I was at this same Target a few hours prior to the incident.

[dday]

The thing that really freaks me out is that this happened at 7pm...practically broad daylight at this time of year. I was at this same Target a few hours prior to the incident.


yeah, you neeed to be aware. always suspect ppl....it's just not safe in this world anymore...for anyone... no one is exempt.

[r0t8]

target sounds like a place to stay away from, after this and the insane employee shooting up the ward parkway store

[ashley]

the store in the building next to my office has fliers with her picture sitting on their counter. i can't imagine what her family is going through right now.

[Benito Hussolini]

This is some sad shit.

[djxanlucero]

yeah , its real disturbing . things like this rarely turn out very well.

[v.j.Ones]

the father works at JCCC (as do i)

the signs are everywhere... it is a fucking shame and i agree with xan, these things rarely turn out well, all the signs point to bad in this one

[Bucho]

i saw on the news that her dad is a cop and taught her and her siblings everything he knows about self-protection in these situations...hopefully someone somewhere is hurtin bad and it's not her.

[dday]

http://img.video.ap.org/i/002/0605dv_kansas_abduction_092x069.jpg


video of suspect and girl...

[mike p]

You females need to learn some self defense and carry pepper spray.
The guy that grabbed her wasn't a big guy.

[Bucho]

they just found her body in a creekbed :(

[dday]

no fucking way....


that sucks.

[djxanlucero]

man , that fucking sucks yo

[FSTZ]

tragic...

absolutely tragic

[ashley]

this kind of stuff makes me so emotional. i am fighting back tears at work just thinking about what her family must be going through right now.... just makes me think of my own little girl and how much i just want to go home and hold her right now and never let her out of my sight......

[FSTZ]

tell me about it...

I have a 10 year old daughter and two neices

[Bhumble]

http://www.kctv5.com/Global/story.asp?S=6606183

[Monkey]

I had hoped it wasn't going to end like this but after a couple days....I am really upset - this story makes me not want to go anywhere alone anymore. I can only imagine what her family is going through, she had a really great future ahead of her from the sounds of it. :(

[dday]

for some reason i am extremly sad too....

[Christina]

damn. the find kelsey site is already down.

very sad.

[Becca]

:( I didn't know her, but I knew her sister...I'm almost tempted to go to the vigil tonight...

I still can't believe it...had I been there a few hours later it could have been me.

[dday]

:( I didn't know her, but I knew her sister...I'm almost tempted to go to the vigil tonight...

I still can't believe it...had I been there a few hours later it could have been me.

not to be funny, but you know where to kick if someone tries to grab you right sweetie?


LADIES, BE SMART..BE SAFE....BE VIOLENT!!!

don't let this be you....


i'm very sad due to the outcome....that skinny bastard in the photos will be found....

[Becca]

Of course I do.

[Scottie Smalls]

We got an email at work from our CEO after her body was found. I guess she worked at one of our movie theatres. Stories like this are so sad and also very hard to understand, because the acts of violence seem so senseless. I don't think we need to be fearing one another on a constant basis, but I will admit some pepper spray may not be a bad thing to have in your purse just in case you run into a wack job.

[Becca]

I have enough trouble finding my keys in my purse...I doubt pepper spray would help me much in a situation like hers (surprised by an attack from behind)

[Jennie]

My mom reminded me today that if something like that were to ever happen to me, its safer to jump out of a moving vehicle (even on the highway) than to stay in the car.

I had a feeling this would end this way. How truly sad. I'm interested to see if this person knew her, and why this all happened.

Being a therapist, not to mention one who works in a prison, has really made me interested in the reasons why people do these things. I have a patient who has committed first degree murder and if you stopped her on the street you'd think she was perfectly normal...

[dday]

I have enough trouble finding my keys in my purse...I doubt pepper spray would help me much in a situation like hers (surprised by an attack from behind)
mule kick to the nuts might have helped...might not have though...it's hard to tell....just.so sad.

[Becca]

I wonder if "SING" from Miss Congeniality really works...

Solar plexus
Instep
Nose
Groin

[Scottie Smalls]

I have enough trouble finding my keys in my purse...I doubt pepper spray would help me much in a situation like hers (surprised by an attack from behind)

true. anytime you aren't in the public eye you are basically susceptible to being attacked. I'm just thankful for the most part that we can pretty much walk around freely and without worry and that tragic stories such as Kelsey's are very much the exception in our society.

Still, sometimes you wonder why events like these ever have to occur. So terrible. Often I wish I was part of a species less violent toward one another.

[r0t8]

saying that "females should learn to watch out for themselves" just plays into the rather unwarranted paranoia many women are feeling after this. something like this is not random. a young man of that age does not randomly kidnap a girl and take her out to the woods and kill her. a serial killer might do that, but he doesn't fit the profile. i would be willing to bet that she had some kind of romantic relationship with him in the past and her parents and friends didn't know about it, or maybe they did, but never met him. surely the fact that she was about to graduate was somehow part of his motive.

[Jennie]

I agree. I really doubt this was random unless he was very seriously mentally ill, and even then, I'm sure there was some connection. Most murders aren't random, and frankly the chance of being kidnapped and killed on a whim is quite slim.

I think its good to be alert and aware of your surroundings, at any rate, but hopefully this will not cause anyone extreme paranoia.

[Becca]

26 year old Edwin R. Hall of Olathe has been arrested and will be formally charged with 1st degree murder and aggravated kidnapping tomorrow.

[DjNyx]

they just found her body in a creekbed :(


that creekbed belongs to my school!

i hate it when stuff like this happens. What in the world drives people to do something like that???

[dday]

saying that "females should learn to watch out for themselves" just plays into the rather unwarranted paranoia many women are feeling after this. something like this is not random. a young man of that age does not randomly kidnap a girl and take her out to the woods and kill her. a serial killer might do that, but he doesn't fit the profile. i would be willing to bet that she had some kind of romantic relationship with him in the past and her parents and friends didn't know about it, or maybe they did, but never met him. surely the fact that she was about to graduate was somehow part of his motive.


yeah man....completly unwarranted....i mean, i just got kidnapped twice last week.

this case may not be random, we'll see soon, but dood, don't act like women don't have anything to worry about....


i hope they caught the right guy.

[joshchrans]

My mom reminded me today that if something like that were to ever happen to me, its safer to jump out of a moving vehicle (even on the highway) than to stay in the car.

I do not believe this to be true. Stay in the car. Provided the abductor is driving, and you are not bound, go for the eyes, nuts, whatever, yank on the wheel, shift it into reverse.. I believe you would be safer to try to wreck the car and get out and escape. The likelihood of surviving jumping out of a car at highway speeds is almost none. I know someone who died after falling off a motorcycle at 45mph.. And he had a helmet on.

[ashley]

26 year old Edwin R. Hall of Olathe has been arrested and will be formally charged with 1st degree murder and aggravated kidnapping tomorrow.

i shudder everytime i think of this........but i know edwin. he spent his early years in foster care before he was adopted by a family in emporia (where i grew up). his sister sabrina (a biological child of his adoptive parents) graduated with me and she and i cheered together in high school. the family that adopted him is a very kind and selfless family. they always had foster children and now their own grown children have foster children. when i worked for the farm (foster care for SRS) in emporia, i had several kids placed with edwin's oldest adopted sister who has 3 children of her own, plus 1 she has adopted and she always had foster kids at any given time. his adopted family kept him until he was 15. at that point, they turned him back over to the state when sabrina (his sister that was in my class) woke up in the middle of the night with edwin standing over her with a knife.

edwin had a troubled past and grew up in the system. i never knew many of the details.....but it makes me so sick to think that i actually know this kid. he was actually in a trampoline and power tumbling class that i taught in high school. he's not someone i ever hung out with or anything....but i know his adopted family pretty well and if i saw him walking down the street, he would know who i was. the last time i saw him was at a friend's college graduation party in '01 and he came up to me and asked if i remembered him.... chilling...

[dday]

yikes!



i shudder everytime i think of this........but i know edwin. he spent his early years in foster care before he was adopted by a family in emporia (where i grew up). his sister sabrina (a biological child of his adoptive parents) graduated with me and she and i cheered together in high school. the family that adopted him is a very kind and selfless family. they always had foster children and now their own grown children have foster children. when i worked for the farm (foster care for SRS) in emporia, i had several kids placed with edwin's oldest adopted sister who has 3 children of her own, plus 1 she has adopted and she always had foster kids at any given time. his adopted family kept him until he was 15. at that point, they turned him back over to the state when sabrina (his sister that was in my class) woke up in the middle of the night with edwin standing over her with a knife.

edwin had a troubled past and grew up in the system. i never knew many of the details.....but it makes me so sick to think that i actually know this kid. he was actually in a trampoline and power tumbling class that i taught in high school. he's not someone i ever hung out with or anything....but i know his adopted family pretty well and if i saw him walking down the street, he would know who i was. the last time i saw him was at a friend's college graduation party in '01 and he came up to me and asked if i remembered him.... chilling...

[ashley]

i know the hall's did as much as they could for him....but after he was posing a threat to their family, they finally decided they couldn't do much more for him. at that point, he was placed in a juvenile detention center until age 18.


it's just hard to swallow the fact that i actually know someone that could do something like this.....

[Monkey]

When I heard he was kinda from Emporia I wondered if you knew him. Totally scary.