More than 50 volunteers from the Charlotte area searched in the Wilkesboro area on Sunday in connection with last week’s disappearance of 39-year-old Holly Fischer of Charlotte, according to search organizers.
Law enforcement officials from Wilkes and Ashe counties also joined the search, which included escorting volunteers through Mount Jefferson State Park, where conditions were slippery because of rain, according to one of the search organizers, Scott Ajello.
http://liarcatchers.com/missing_persons_investigations.html
“There were people on ATVs, there was a sniffing dog,” said Ajello. “There’s guarded optimism. …When everyone tries to … figure what happened, nothing seems to make sense.”
Fischer hasn’t been seen since she left her parents’ home in Tennessee on May 27. She told her parents, Ted and Leslie, that she was headed home to Charlotte.
She never made it, however. Her roommate called Ted Fischer on Wednesday to say she had not returned to their apartment, according to the Knox County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities have said they are focusing their search on Ashe and Wilkes counties, about 100 miles north of Charlotte, because her cellphone was used near the Ashe-Wilkes line on Thursday afternoon after 5 p.m.
Ajello said volunteers focused their search in that area on Sunday, looking along N.C. 16, within the park and in the area of W. Kerr Scott Dam & Reservoir. There have been no reported sightings of the car she was driving, a silver 2004 Infiniti FX35, with North Carolina license plate XYH-6678.
The Ashe County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina conducted an air and land search of an area near the Blue Ridge Parkway over two days late last week, according to the Knox County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee.
Authorities have said Fischer used her bank card the afternoon of May 27 at a convenience store on Interstate 40 in Newport, Tenn., which is east of Knoxville and along the route she always traveled between her parents’ home and Charlotte.
Ted Fischer said that when his daughter left his house, she was very emotional and upset because she is going through a divorce, according to a statement on the Knox County Sheriff’s Office website.
Ajello said that, because Fischer was very safety conscious, her friends fear foul play is involved in her disappearance.
“Nothing is turning up at all,” he said. “We’d like to see every possible avenue investi
gated.”
Anyone with information in the case is asked to call 911.
