Sjodin investigator: 'I'm not going to give up hope'
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Sgt. Mike Hedlund, Grand Forks Police Department
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GRAND FORKS, North Dakota (CNN) -- Authorities confirmed that preliminary DNA tests found missing college student Dru Sjodin's blood in the car of the man suspected of kidnapping her. CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer spoke with Sgt. Mike Hedlund of the Grand Forks Police Department about the implications.
BLITZER: Is it as grim as it appears?
HEDLUND: I'm trying to remain as optimistic as possible. Until we locate Dru, we're going to continue on focusing on our mission, and that's to find Dru and to locate her and to bring her back home.
BLITZER: But you can confirm that the blood that was found in the car, at least the preliminary DNA test says that it does match Dru Sjodin's DNA?
HEDLUND: I'm sorry, but unfortunately our department at this point in time is still not making, commenting, on any specifics regarding the evidence, so I can't really comment on that at this point in time.
BLITZER: Are you getting any cooperation whatsoever from the suspect?
HEDLUND: The last I'd heard was several days ago and to the best of my knowledge we're not having any further conversations with Mr. Rodriguez.
Obviously we're still hoping that those channels of communication will reopen and that we will still get some assistance from him, but at this point in time we're continuing with our investigation as best we can and carrying on search efforts.
National Guard and various other law enforcement assistance will be coming into the area this weekend and working with the authorities on both the Minnesota side and the North Dakota side as we continue the searches.
BLITZER: Is the National Guard being brought in because of the manpower, the additional people who can help in the search or [does it] have some highly sophisticated equipment that might be useful in the search?
HEDLUND: Both, to some degree. They certainly have equipment and clothing that allows them to handle the weather that we're experiencing. The temperatures have dropped significantly in recent days.
Throughout the course of the search we've actually been relatively lucky with the weather as far as this part of Minnesota and North Dakota is concerned.
It's been certainly as warm or warmer than normal. While it's still been very cold it has not been bad. In the coming days we have some extremely cold temperatures coming on, and that's certainly something that needs to be dealt with, and you have to have people out there that are going to be equipped to handle those temperatures and the extreme conditions that they're going to have to deal with.
BLITZER: At what point, sergeant, do you just simply give up hope that you'll find, God forbid, a body?
HEDLUND: I guess until that day occurs I'm not going to give up hope. We're going to hang on to every last shred of hope we can and every faith that we have that we may still be able to find Dru, and we want to bring her home and get her back to her family.
BLITZER: Have you had a chance to speak with her family? How are they doing?
HEDLUND: I haven't had a chance to speak to them. I've been out of town unfortunately for the last couple days. The last I spoke to the family they were doing very well under the circumstances.
As you can imagine this is a tragic situation, and you wouldn't wish it on anyone. Under the circumstances I think they're doing very well, and I'm extremely impressed with this family.
