Jake Wilson search: Volunteers no longer needed in search for La Porte City teen

LA PORTE CITY, Ia. — The search for a missing autistic 16-year-old will continue Thursday without the help of volunteers from the public.

Investigators told reporters Wednesday night that they've reached a point in their investigation where large numbers of volunteers are no longer needed to search for Jake Wilson in the area around La Porte City in northeast Iowa.

Instead, further searches will be handled by professionals with specialized skills like K-9 units, dive squads and water rescue teams.

"We still are very optimistic about everything and we are a bit surprised that we got to this point in our investigation so quickly," La Porte City Police Chief Chris Brecher said. "And it’s mainly because of the huge, massive turnouts that we had."

Wilson was last seen at 9 p.m. Saturday going for a walk to Wolf Creek in town, police said. When he didn't return home, law enforcement started searching for him before 10 p.m., Brecher said.

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Over the next few days, hundreds of volunteers gathered at the La Porte City Fire Station to lend a hand in the search. That included about 315 people on Wednesday, Brecher said.

Although Wilson remains missing and authorities are asking the public to stay home, they reiterated that the search is still on.

"We are absolutely committed and absolutely dedicated to doing exactly what we’re doing right now for as long as it takes," said Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson. "We want to bring Jake home and that’s our ultimate goal and that’s our absolute conviction. We’re here until we do that."

Melting snow helps. Murky water doesn't

The warming weather improved search conditions Wednesday as snow melted, but going forward law enforcement will have a more difficult task in front of them as they begin targeted searches of heavily wooded areas and opaque waters.

The search has been expanded to roughly a 10-mile radius, Brecher said, including at least six miles upstream and as many more downstream.

Sonar is being used to aid in searching the creek, Brecher said, and professional dive and water rescue teams will go over sections of the creek with greater deliberation Thursday.

The teams still searching on land will be more specialized as well, and will employ K-9 units and other strategies to check specific areas that have been flagged for follow-up. Those include fringe areas like creek banks, ditches and tree lines near wooded areas — places where it would be harder to spot someone.

That's why it's important for the public to stay home and let law enforcement exert more control over the search, to avoid potentially contaminating an area of interest.

"All those well-wishers and do-gooders, I appreciate them, but in a lot of respects they may be doing more harm than good if they are out there freelancing, doing their own thing in an area that we’ve already got mapped to try to do later," Thompson said.

'Every lesson learned is being applied today'

As the search for Wilson becomes more targeted, the team of law enforcement looking into other leads about his whereabouts has grown.

Thompson said the squad of investigators working the case has expanded from three to about 30 and includes officials from local, state and federal agencies.

Thompson said cooperation between the agencies has been fantastic and searchers are using new technology — like drones — that wasn't as readily available in 2012, when two cousins from Evansdale, a Waterloo suburb, went missing and were later found dead.

"I was involved in the missing cousins case and just about every lesson learned is being applied today," Thompson said.

Authorities said specialists are sifting through the evidence that the large volunteer force has brought to their attention, weeding out dead ends and following up on promising clues. Investigators reviewed over 140 leads on Wednesday, Thompson said.

"The lessons that we’ve learned have made us more dramatically efficient and effective in what we’re doing here," Thompson said. "The problem is we haven’t found that one clue, we haven’t found that one piece of evidence, that one piece of information that has brought Jake Wilson back yet."

They say they are still looking into all possibilities, including the chance that Wilson was enticed or abducted.

Officials overnight processed much of the video evidence recovered from various businesses around town, which Thompson said helped them rule out several locations where they no longer expect Wilson to be.

"Any spot of dry land that has been combed five times by 150, 200 different walkers across the same area, we’re pretty confident that we’ve got it locked down," Thompson said. "So yeah, there’s a lot of areas that we’ve checked off that we’re pretty sure he’s not."

'I just couldn't stop thinking about it'

Law enforcement thanked volunteers for their work Wednesday evening, giving them credit for helping the investigation move into the next phase as quickly as it did.

Thompson described it as going "from a broad net to a very surgical approach."

"I’m sure there’s public that are frustrated about it but this is expected, this is where we wanted to be," he said.

Kassie Krug, a school nurse who was volunteering as part of the search, drove more than an hour from Cedar Rapids on Wednesday morning to assist. She's been following the case in the news for the last few days and decided to come when she saw that Wilson still hadn't been found.

"I just couldn't stop thinking about it, so I took a personal day from work and came out here," said Krug, who has a 12-year-old brother with autism. Her brother will sometimes wander off, giving her a scare, she said.

"Just those two seconds feels like an hour or a day," Krug said. "I can’t imagine how long this mom’s (been) feeling like it is."

Mike Smith and Josh Bervid were searching alongside a few coworkers from Frontier Co-op in Belle Plaine. Smith summed up their motivation succinctly.

"We've got a kid to find. Those of us that are parents, we get it," he said.

Amy McAllister drove from nearby Waterloo to help. She said she regrets not being able to help search for the Evansdale cousins five years ago, but she had young children at the time. Now she's able to help.

She's holding out hope that searchers will find Wilson bundled up somewhere. She doesn't know Wilson or his family and had never been to La Porte City, but said she wanted to lend a hand to those in need.

"I think that's what Iowa is about, and hopefully America," she said.

For those volunteers who still want to help, Thompson said the most important things they can do are let law enforcement work and spread the word about Wilson.

"What we really want is Jake Wilson’s face, Jake Wilson’s story, Jake Wilson’s predicament, the family’s situation, to be on the forefront of everybody’s mind because everybody is a searcher whether you realize it or not," Thompson said.