After 10 days of searching, authorities in California announced Monday they would “switch modes” to “a more limited” hunt for missing teenager Kiely Rodni.
Rodni vanished from a beach party at the Prosser Family Campground in Truckee on August 6, as CrimeOnline previously reported. The girl texted her mother that she was heading home at about 12:30 a.m. and telephoned a friend who was also at the party a few minutes later to say good bye, but she hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
On Sunday, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office released a photograph of a white hoodie with pink lettering “Odd Future,” saying video showed Rodni wearing the shirt at the party. It was different from a black hoodie investigators said earlier someone had loaned the girl — sheriff’s spokesperson Angela Musallam said investigators still believe that is true, but they have imagery of Rodni wearing the white shirt and not the black one.
At Monday’s news conference, Sheriff’s Capt. Sam Brown, who is heading up the search, praised the “incredible effort” of searchers, including members of Rodni’s family and the community, but said, “We are gonna have to switch modes and focus on the investigative side.”
“We are moving to a more limited but continuous search and rescue effort,” he said, noting that searchers had already spent more than 9,000 man hours trying to locate Rodni.
“We still need people to have their eyes and ears out there to support our goal, which has never changed from the beginning … to find Kiely Rodni,” he added.
Sheriff’s Lt. Josh Barnhart said his group was also “be modifying things to a task force style” involving multiple state and local agencies as well as the FBI.
“We’ve identified lead investigators from each agency … that means with these leads, we’ll be able to cycle people through rather than having a large group here,” he said.
Barnhart also acknowledged “an isolated incident we were able to get past” in which certain adults were advising teens and young adults not to speak with investigators.
“For the most part everyone’s been very cooperative,” he said. “We haven’t run into a very large roadblock.”
The California Highway Patrol again explained that Rodni’s disappearance did not meet the criteria for an Amber Alert, adding that the national push of the story had hit the level of outreach such a designation would have reached.
Musallam also added a final tidbit of information: Rodni’s car, a silver 2013 Honda CRV, has a ram’s head sticker under the rear windshield wiper.
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[Featured image: Kiely Rodni/Placer County Sheriff’s Office]
