SEARCH FOR GIRLTO PICK BACK UP Newspaper February 15, 2000 | Charlotte Observer (NC) Author: AILEEN SOPER, Staff Writer | Page: 1B | Section: LOCAL 1095 Words | Readability: Lexile: 1040, grade level(s): 6 7 8 A 9-year-old girl was reported missing about 6:30 a.m. Monday, when her mother went to wake her up for school and found she had disappeared from the bedroom she shared with her 10-year-old brother, sheriff's deputies and family members said. By dark, a 12-hour hunt by ground and air for Asha Degree had turned up nothing, leaving searchers and relatives desperate for answers. "We are canvassing every possible lead," said Bob Roadcap, chief deputy with the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office. "Right now, we don't have anything." The search focused on the area near the family's house on Oakcrest Street, just north of Shelby. The site is off N.C. 18, in a quiet, modest neighborhood of ranch-style brick houses. Two motorists told authorities they may have seen Asha walking on N.C. 18 between 3:30 a.m. and 4:15 a.m., officials said. Authorities called off the search at nightfall and said it's likely to resume today at dawn. They put out a statewide bulletin for Asha. Roadcap said there were no signs of forced entry at the Degree residence and that family members heard nothing unusual during the night. Authorities said the family called police shortly after they realized the child was missing. Asha's parents were cooperating fully with investigators, he said. They were being interviewed late Monday night at the Sheriff's Office by deputies and agents with the State Bureau of Investigation, authorities said. "Everybody is a suspect right now," Roadcap said. Roadcap, who has worked with the Sheriff's Office for five years, said he had never seen a child so young missing for so long when a parents' custody battle was not a factor in the disappearance. There are no custody disputes relating to Asha, Roadcap said. In a telephone interview Monday morning, Asha's father described the girl as shy and quiet and said she had never run away. Harold Degree said there were no family problems that would have made his daughter want to leave. "She doesn't even open the front door for me without getting her mother's permission, and I'm her aunt," said Patricia Banks, Harold Degree's sister. Asha's father said the girl went to bed about 6:30 p.m. Sunday. About 8:30 p.m. she awakened when lightning storms and high winds swept through the area. She watched TV in the den with the rest of family until returning to bed at 9 p.m. Harold Degree said he checked on Asha and her brother, O'Bryan, and found them sleeping before he went to bed at 12:30 a.m. Asha's mother, Aquila, went to wake up the children before school but found Asha gone, Harold Degree said. Her bed looked like it had been slept in. Asha usually makes her bed right after she wakes up, her father said. Asha went to bed in a nightshirt. Missing from her room were the clothes she wore the day before - a white T-shirt with purple lettering that was made for a Degree family reunion held in Atlanta, blue jeans and white tennis shoes. Also missing were Asha's black book bag and a black purse with a "Tweety Bird," on it, her father said. Asha is 4 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 65 pounds. She is African American and wears her hair in pigtails. Her parents found all the doors in the house locked, Harold Degree said. Asha had a key, but kept it in the book bag, he said. Sheriff's deputies launched a full-scale search early in the morning and by noon had asked for the assistance of an N.C. Highway Patrol helicopter with infrared heat- detection equipment. Search dogs did not pick up Asha's scent. By 2 p.m. SBI agents arrived at the house. They taped off the front porch as a crime scene and allowed only immediate family members inside. Authorities interviewed staff and students at Asha's school, Fallston Elementary, and searched her neighborhood again several times. Up to 60 volunteers from area fire departments, the Red Cross and concerned residents gathered nearby at Mull's Memorial Baptist Church, where a command post was set up. They searched a three-mile-wide swath of the area, said Beau Lovelace, the Cleveland County fire marshal. "Dark is going to kill us," Lovelace said as the sun was setting. As it happens, it was Asha's parents' 12th wedding anniversary Monday. They were described as hard- working - he is a dock loader at PPG Industries Inc. in Shelby, and she works at Kawai America Manufacturing in Lincolnton, said Carroll Degree, Asha's paternal uncle, who lives across the street. Aquila Degree rarely misses weekly Bible study at the Baptist church the family attends, he said. Asha, who is in fourth grade, missed only one other day of school this year, said Donna Carpenter, a spokeswoman for the Cleveland County School District. "She's an outstanding student with an excellent attendance record," Carpenter said. Neighbors and family members, exhausted from hours of searching, gathered in front of Asha's house late in the afternoon. Only a passing hailstorm chased them away. "Somebody could have snatched her out of the house," said 12-year-old Chanel Degree, Asha's first cousin. "I just hope they find her." Asha plays basketball and likes riding her bike and jumping on a trampoline, her cousins said. Chanel said she, Asha and a dozen of their cousins had a sleepover Saturday night at a family member's house just up the street. "She was real happy," Chanel said. "She was dancing and laughing." Catina Degree, 15, the cousin who hosted the weekend slumber party, slumped next to Chanel on a lawn chair. She and other family members spent the entire day looking for Asha. "I'd say I walked 10 miles today," said Carroll Degree, Asha's uncle, who began searching with her parents at 6:30 a.m. "We all prayed this morning. That's really all we can do. Her parents are trying to stay positive and hope for the best." "We're in shock," said Banks, Asha's aunt, who formerly worked as a prison guard for the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office. "We tried checking everywhere we could think of, calling everyone we could call, checking the neighbors. We walked through fields and woods." "Now it's getting dark, getting cold and that child doesn't have a coat on," Banks said. CONCERN GROWS AS GIRL STAYS MISSING Newspaper February 17, 2000 | Charlotte Observer (NC) Author: AILEEN SOPER, Staff Writer | Page: 1A | Section: MAIN 1020 Words | Readability: Lexile: 1100, grade level(s): 8 9 10 11-12 A Cleveland County truck driver on his regular delivery route spotted a young girl walking south on N.C. 18 around 4 a.m. Monday. Thinking it was strange, Jeff Ruppe turned around the 10-wheeler he drives for the Sun Drop Bottling Co. - no easy task on the winding two-lane road. "I seen a little girl walking down the road with her book bag," Ruppe said Wednesday. He now believes she was 9- year-old Asha Degree , who vanished from her Shelby home that morning. "She had on a little dress and white tennis shoes, and her hair was in pigtails." Ruppe grew concerned. "I went back, but she never did look up at me," Ruppe said. "She looked like she knew where she was going. She was walking at a pretty good pace." Three days after Asha disappeared, attracting more than 100 searchers and an outpouring of community support, authorities say they believe she left home by herself, then met with trouble. As of Wednesday night, she still had not been found. "My gut tells me at this point that foul play is involved," said Cleveland County Sheriff Dan Crawford, who is leading the investigation with assistance from the State Bureau of Investigation and the FBI. "I think that she left on her own." Crawford said investigators were exploring several scenarios including abduction, that she was hit by a car, or that she was somehow injured and unable to seek help. Authorities say the best leads they have so far in the case are several reports of sightings similar to Ruppe's. "I can pretty much say that (Asha's parents) have been ruled out as suspects," Crawford said. He said the couple have been interviewed daily by authorities and have cooperated fully with investigators. They have spent hours searching for their daughter. Crawford declined to comment on whether they had been asked to take lie- detector tests. Bob Roadcap, chief deputy of the Cleveland County Sheriff's Department, said investigators passed out fliers with Asha's picture in surrounding counties Wednesday and put out a nationwide missing person's bulletin. The air search was called off Wednesday morning, but ground searchers continued to focus on an area along N.C. 18, about 11/2 miles south of Asha's house at 3404 Oakcrest St., and several miles north of Shelby. That is the spot where Ruppe and several other motorists reported seeing someone fitting her description walking south along the road near the intersection of N.C. 180. In all, Ruppe drove past a girl he now believes was Asha three times before heading on his way. Hours later, as he ate lunch Monday, he saw a TV report about the missing girl. He called police. "I wish I could have done more," said the 25-year-old Fallston, man who has two young children of his own. Asha's parents reported her missing about 6:30 a.m. Monday, after her mother went to wake her up for school and found her missing from the bedroom she shares with her 10-year-old brother. Another person who reported seeing someone on the road about 4:30 that morning was Roy Blanton Sr. of Shelby and his son Roy Jr., who were on a trucking run from Shelby to Fallston. They were headed north on N.C. 18 when they saw someone walking south along the road, Blanton said. They worried she might get hit by a truck, so they used their CB radio to warn nearby truckers to be on the alert, Blanton said. "It was a small figure wearing light-colored clothing," said Blanton, a former deputy at the Cleveland County Sheriff's Department who now drives for Porter's Transport Inc. "I thought it was a woman. I couldn't tell it was a child. I thought that maybe it was a domestic-violence thing where a woman left the house and was out walking." From Fallston, the Blantons drove to High Point, then to Chicago. The elder Blanton didn't think anything else of it until 10 p.m. Tuesday, when he talked to his wife on the phone from Chicago and she told him about the missing girl. Blanton returned from Chicago late Wednesday afternoon and reported his sighting to sheriff's deputies at their command post, Mulls Memorial Baptist Church, near Asha's home. Dogs have not been able to pick up Asha's scent and searchers have found no signs of the girl. Dog handlers said the animals can detect a live human's scent for anywhere from three to four days, depending on weather. Rain helps because scent is drawn to moisture, handlers said. It was raining Monday morning, when Asha was reported missing. Family members say Asha is shy and quiet and had no problems at home or school that would make her want to leave home. Gone from Asha's room were her black book bag and purse and clothes she wore Sunday: a white T- shirt, jeans and white tennis shoes. Her parents say they found the doors locked and there were no signs of forced entry. Crawford said Wednesday the investigators bought a pair of tennis shoes the same brand and size as the pair Asha was believed to have been wearing when she left home. The idea is to compare the shoes with any footprints that searchers may find. They have found none that match, Crawford said. Beau Lovelace, Cleveland County fire marshal and head of the search, said about 45 people - down from a high of 100 on Tuesday - hunted areas in a three-mile radius from the reported sightings. They were covering ground they had already looked in several times, he said. The air search, performed with helicopters and small aircraft, was called off early Wednesday morning and is not expected to resume, Crawford said. He and Lovelace said they would decide at 9 a.m. today whether the ground search would continue. "The determining factor will be if we have any new leads," Lovelace said. Late in the day on Wednesday, Lovelace slumped in an arm chair inside the command post. He was fighting to stay awake after a sleepless night. "I went to bed, but I didn't sleep," he said. "I was just going over everything in my mind over and over and over." GIRL'S FAMILY FINDS HOPE AS SEARCH IS NARROWED Newspaper February 18, 2000 | Charlotte Observer (NC) Author: AILEEN SOPER, Staff Writer * Contributor: Staff writer Karen Cimino contributed to this article. | Page: 1A | Section: MAIN 998 Words A trail that was growing cold offered new clues in the case of a missing 9-year-old Cleveland County girl when relatives identified her hair bow and other items Thursday. Investigators called the discovery of the bow, candy wrappers, and a pen and pencil in an outbuilding just a mile from Asha Degree 's house the first tangible evidence in her Monday disappearance. It lifted the flagging spirits of family members, investigators and searchers. "The family is very hopeful," said Maurice Jackson, Asha's maternal uncle who is acting as the family spokesman. "It's the first evidence they've seen that they think might be Asha's." Volunteers and investigators have combed an area along N.C. 18, about 1 1/2 miles south of Asha's home north of Shelby every day since her disappearance. Motorists told police they'd seen the girl walking south on N.C. 18, near the intersection of N.C. 180, about 4 a.m. Monday. The break came late Wednesday, when investigators brought one motorist back to where he reported seeing Asha. Jeff Ruppe, of Fallston, a truck driver for Sun Drop Bottling Co., pointed out a spot near a field owned by Charles Turner. As part of its investigation, the FBI gave Ruppe a polygraph test, which he passed. Investigators believe Asha likely left home on her own, then met trouble. Her parents reported her missing at 6:30 a.m. Monday, after her mother went to wake her for school. "My biggest fear is that she is somewhere, hurt, not able to get help," said Cleveland County Sheriff Dan Crawford. "What if she is only a tenth of a mile further from where we looked?" Turner, who runs Turner's Upholstery, said he and his family found several items in a rickety outbuilding on their land near where Asha was last seen. Among them was a wallet-sized photograph of a young girl. On Tuesday, they gave it to police, who showed it to Asha's family. But the girl's relatives could not identify the photo. The Turners did not give investigators several other items they found next to the picture. They held onto them, thinking they didn't matter because Asha's family hadn't recognized the picture, said Turner's son, Charles Turner Jr. On Thursday morning, a member of a search party looking for Asha found a candy wrapper near the Turners' outbuilding, Crawford said. Asked about it, Turner's wife and daughter gave searchers the other items, which they had kept in a pile on their porch, Crawford said. Asha's relatives recognized the items. "The parents were just tore all to pieces because they said `Yes! Yes! It's hers," said Cleveland County sheriff's Detective Wayne Thomas. Crawford said he believed the most significant find was the pencil that had "Atlanta" on it. The Degree family held its reunion there last year. Thomas, who interviewed many of Asha's classmates and friends, said she attended a Valentine's party last weekend and was given a bag of candy. FBI crime-scene technicians will test all of the articles, Crawford said. "My gut feeling is that they are hers," Crawford said. No one knows why Asha might have left home. Crawford said he believes she might have walked along N.C. 18, then grew frightened and sought shelter in the outbuilding. Authorities are exploring abduction as one possible scenario, but have not ruled out any others. Crawford said investigators interviewed possible witnesses Thursday, including the Turners and a man who lived in a mobile home near the outbuilding. Searchers refocused their efforts late Thursday afternoon in the area near where the items were discovered. They performed an "inch-by-inch" search near the Hoyle Memorial United Methodist Church. Cleveland County sheriff's Lt. Joel Newton instructed them to concentrate on something that might have dropped from the book bag authorities believe she had with her; something they might have overlooked on their previous searches in that area. Five searchers squatted in a circle around a faded root beer-flavored dumdums' wrapper, wondering if it could have belonged to Asha. But deputies took one look and told the group to keep looking. It looked too old to have been dropped by Asha. Ten yards away searchers stopped again to examine a plastic candy wrapper tied with red yarn. Keep going, deputies said. "We're looking for anything we can find - candy wrappers, hair bows, anything," said Cathy Christopher, a Boiling Springs Rescue worker who was searching for the first time Thursday. Sally Thompson, 24, a Shelby mother of two came out to search Thursday for the first time. She crawled into a narrow drainage pipe with a flashlight. But all the beam of light revealed was water and wet leaves. Searchers moved on again. They formed a straight line, each searcher 10 feet from the next, and pored over the ground looking for red cellophane cinnamon disk wrappers - one of the candies Asha favored. B.E. Price, 14, pushed into a wooded area filled with prickly briars that snagged searchers clothes and tore tiny holes in their skin. "This is my first day searching," said B.E., an eighth-grader at Burns Middle School. "She's been out here an awful long time." "I don't know about y'all, but I'm not giving up until I find this child," Thomas told the searchers, after warning them that some law enforcement officers might seem a little cranky after going without much sleep for four days. The searchers disbanded at nightfall with no new discoveries. The search will resume this morning with the addition of 15 investigators from Cherokee County, S.C., Crawford said. Crawford said he would keep looking until he believed the effort was futile. "Everybody is asking, `How long do you keep searching?' " he said. "Ultimately, it's going to fall to me." The new command post will be at the Hoyle Methodist Church, where the sign outside reads: "Negative thinking harms the body and burdens the soul." MOOD GLOOMIER IN SEARCH FOR GIRL, 9 Newspaper February 19, 2000 | Charlotte Observer (NC) Author: KAREN CIMINO, Staff Writer | Page: 1B | Section: METRO 508 Words The search for a missing 9-year-old Cleveland County girl will continue today with more than 500 searchers but no new clues. Searchers looked for Asha Degree with renewed fervor Friday after learning Thursday that items found in an old barn behind Turner's Upholstery on N.C. 18 belonged to the little girl. Motorists had reported seeing Asha walking near that area about the time she disappeared Monday."Thursday was a good day," said Rick Dancy, executive director of Cleveland County Red Cross. "We felt maybe she was just out there getting help from people. Everybody had that extra bit of incentive to go out Friday and find the kid before a really bad night hit us." Searchers will begin regrouping at 8:30 a.m. for the day's search. But morale was waning once again. "Every day that goes by, I become a little less optimistic just because she's a little girl," Dancy said Friday as the search ended for the fifth night. "If she's exposed to the elements, tonight is going to be a real tough one for her." Cold rain fell off and on all day Friday, and temperatures were expected to dip to the mid-40s Friday night. Dancy said the Red Cross, Cleveland County Sheriff's Department and Cleveland County Emergency Management will set up headquarters at three churches along N.C. 18 today: Ross Grove Baptist Church, Pleasant Grove Baptist Church and Hoyle Memorial Methodist Church. About 100 searchers combed the land surrounding an old barn on N.C. 18 Friday. Rallie Turner, 59, found a yellow hair bow, candy, a green marker and a white pencil with writing on it in the old building, which now houses discarded furniture and a red Cub Farmall tractor. "There was a little picture next to the tractor," said Turner, who found the items Tuesday. "The hair bow was an inch and a half long. It's plastic and it had a little teddy bear on it. It was solid yellow." Investigators thought they had something when the Degree family identified the items as belonging to Asha. But nothing new turned up Friday. Volunteers and trained search-and-rescue teams have been searching for Asha since she was reported missing Monday. Searchers have covered about a 3-mile radius around the Degrees' home and searched in dozens of private yards along N.C. 18. Asha's parents reported her missing at 6:30 a.m. Monday after her mother went to wake her for school. Investigators say Asha likely left her home on her own. They don't know what happened to her after that. Jeff Ruppe, a Sun Drop Bottling Co. truck driver from Fallston, told authorities he saw a little girl walking along the road about 4 a.m. Monday. Connie Turner, Rallie Turner's sister-in-law, said searchers and sheriff's deputies have been swarming her family's land since the little girl's belongings were found there. "Yesterday I was cooking and this drove of people came through here," Turner said. "It's got us all upset." HOPES CRY IN SEARCH FOR CHILD Newspaper February 20, 2000 | Charlotte Observer (NC) Author: Peter St. Onge, Cristina C. Breen, and Karen Cimino, Staff Wrtiers | Page: 1B | Section: METRO 900 Words | Readability: Lexile: 1000, grade level(s): 6 7 8 For eight hours, they searched again Saturday. They searched through dense brush and tangles of tree limbs, through back yards and fields of fledgling weeds. They searched in the neighborhoods near Asha Degree 's house, and in the woods, and in an area miles away where a little girl might have been spotted the night before. They walked side by side in long, quiet lines. They unfolded sheets of copy paper bearing a small shoe print. They shook their heads sadly. They called Asha's name. But for the sixth day, there were no answers in the search for the 9-year-old Cleveland County girl, missing since sometime early Monday. Sheriff's officials will continue to look today, and they hope to be accompanied by a group as large as on Saturday, when about 500 volunteers and professionals showed up to help. For most, it was a day of optimism and frustration, a day of small clues - two muddy footprints and a bag of Valentine's Day candy - but ultimately, little else but hope. "You lay in bed at night and you think about the next day and what's going to turn up," said volunteer Jerry Patterson. "But everybody's still got their hopes up that something will turn up good. Nobody's given up." Patterson, 27, has been searching since Monday, the same day police believe Asha left her family's home, likely on her own. Like many here, he had never met the girl or her family. But, he said, he has a 4-year-old daughter.