More than 100 officers from a variety of law enforcement agencies were in Carthage working leads in the abduction of eight-month-old Eddie Salazar Jr., but officers didn’t have a good description of the suspects as of late Friday.
In a news conference held Friday at Carthage’s Memorial Hall, Carthage Police Chief Greg Dagnan said investigators do not believe the kidnapping was the result of a custody dispute or parental dispute.
“What we know is unknown subjects came into this home and took this child last night,” Dagnan told approximately a dozen members of the media. “The best description we have is one or two males wearing dark clothing and stocking caps and ski masks.”
Dagnan said officers have no information regarding what kind of vehicle the kidnappers might have been driving. He said a check of the family’s background, friends and relatives had turned up no obvious suspects or threats.
Dagnan said there was a second child in the home at the time of the assault, but that child was not harmed and not taken in the incident.
Dagnan said the father was assaulted and knocked unconscious but he was not hurt badly enough to require hospitalization.
Dagnan said the mother of the children was not home at the time of the assault. He declined to say where the mother was, citing the family’s privacy, but he said the circumstances surrounding her absence, “seemed like a normal family situation and didn’t seem to be outside the norm.”
He said a third party was caring for the family and meeting their physical and mental needs while police search for their child. The family has not been allowed back in its home at 227 E. Mound St. because officers still consider it a crime scene.
Carthage Police issued a statewide Amber Alert calling on the public and law officers to be on the lookout for the child.
Dagnan said officers from the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department and police departments in Webb City, Carl Junction, Joplin, Galena, Kan., and others had assisted with the investigation.
He said firefighters from Carthage, Galena, Kan.; rescuers from Newton County, 34 students from the Missouri Southern Police Academy and even Carthage Street Department personnel had assisted in the search.
He said officers had searched a 20-block area around the home and had searched the Spring River and Kellogg Lake Park.
Dagnan said investigators took some extraordinary steps to preserve evidence and search for the child, including asking the railroad that operates the tracks about two blocks south of the house to halt train traffic to allow officers to search along the tracks safely, and asking Carthage trash collection contractor, Allied Waste, to stop trash collections on Friday to let officers search trash containers in the area.
Dagnan asked that anyone with information about the child call the Carthage Police Department at 417-237-7200.
