By Jeff Lehr
jlehr@joplinglobe.com
CARTHAGE, Mo. — A father told police that he struggled Thursday night with one or two masked men who invaded his family’s home in Carthage and abducted his 8-month-old son.
The reported kidnapping of Eddie A. Salazar from his home at 227 E. Mound St. triggered an Amber Alert early Friday morning and a massive search by law enforcement agencies in four states. The search continued into the night Friday without the infant having been located or his abductors identified.
“We are working very hard and doing everything we can to find the child,” Carthage police Chief Greg Dagnan said at a news conference Friday afternoon.
A command post was set up outside the family’s home Friday morning and a search of a 20-block radius was carried out by officers in cars and on foot. More than 100 officers from the Carthage, Joplin, Webb City and Carl Junction police departments, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department and Missouri State Highway Patrol were assisted by students from the Missouri Southern State University police academy in the immediate search of the area.
Into the night
“We’re not going to take the night off,” Dagnan said. “We’re going to keep working on this.”
Besides canvassing people in the neighborhood to see whether anyone had seen anything suspicious, officers were interviewing family members to see if they had any idea who might have taken the child, he said.
The searchers on foot had little to go on. Police had no suspect-vehicle information and could not even be certain any vehicle was involved in the abduction. They were basically looking for the child on the chance that the abductors may have dropped him off somewhere after leaving the house. They also had eyes out for any physical evidence that might be connected to the incident.
Authorities were not yet releasing the names of the parents. Dagnan said investigators had concerns with their privacy and needed to discuss with them the ramifications of the release of their names before doing so. He said their names are likely to be released sometime today.
“They are obviously upset right now and going through a lot.”
The parents are Hispanic and speak some English, but investigators were using an interpreter out of a concern with maintaining clear communications with them, Dagnan said.
The father of the missing baby reportedly had gone to sleep at the time of the incident. The mother of the child was not at home. Sgt. Mike Watson of the state patrol told the Globe that she was working.
Information sketchy
The father was awakened by the home invasion and knocked unconscious during the struggle. He recovered shortly thereafter and placed a 911 call for help at 11:04 p.m., Dagnan said. He said the father’s injury did not require medical treatment.
Dagnan said at the news conference he was not certain whether the father had been struck in the head by an intruder or if he was knocked unconscious in some other manner during the struggle with them. He told the Globe earlier in the day that an intruder had displayed a knife. But he declined to discuss if any other weapons were involved.
A second young child, an older brother of the baby, was present in the home, but did not figure into the incident, Dagnan said.
The father apparently has shown some uncertainty as to the number of suspects involved. When police first put out the Amber Alert, accompanying information mentioned two intruders. But Dagnan cited “one or two masked men” at the news conference.
The Amber Alert reported that the house had been ransacked. Investigators at the news conference declined to discuss the crime scene in detail or reveal anything else the father may have told them about the struggle inside the house. Dagnan said it was difficult to ascertain whether the abduction was the original intent of the intruders or an afterthought.
“Once they got in the house, obviously, they grabbed the child,” he said. “What their original intent was, it’s hard to guess.”
The baby was wearing a blue, short-sleeved, one-piece suit and white socks. Police said the boy has a birthmark on his right arm.
Watson told the Globe that the baby’s apparel in Friday’s cold temperatures made possible exposure of the baby to the elements a concern of searchers.
No commotion
Neighbors of the couple told the Globe that the parents moved into the house on Mound Street about three to four months ago, but that the father has lived in Carthage for several years.
A neighbor said her daughter and son-in-law had visited her and her husband Thursday night and were leaving the home a little after 11 p.m. She said they did not see or hear anything suspicious going on.
“Then we went upstairs to bed, and that’s when we heard all the dogs,” she said of the arrival of police and tracking dogs next door.
The search for baby Eddie started minutes later and kept expanding overnight, investigators said.
Dagnan said investigators are viewing the reported abduction as an “isolated incident” and not one that should raise undue alarm among residents about the safety of their children. He told the Globe shortly before noon: “Something like this that looks random rarely is random.”
Hours later at the news conference, however, he warned against people jumping to any conclusions about the case. He said investigators had no reason then to view the incident as anything other than an abduction by strangers.
Pursuit of leads
Reports of the abduction of baby Eddie Salazar were generating dozens of leads for investigators Friday, none of which had produced anything “concrete” by late in the day, according to Carthage police Chief Greg Dagnan.
Searches of Kellogg Lake Park on the city’s northeast side and water rescue workers’ search along Spring River were part of a general search effort and not a response to any specific information that investigators had received, the police chief said.
