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Investigators: Did girl run away or was she abducted?


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Jessica Marie Lunsford, 9, has been missing since Wednesday night.
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Searchers continue to look for missing 9-year-old Florida girl.
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HOMOSASSA SPRINGS, Florida (CNN) -- The father of a missing Florida girl said Monday he is convinced she was abducted, but a sheriff's spokeswoman said the question remains open whether 9-year-old Jessica Marie Lunsford ran away or was taken from her home.

Jessica's father, Mark Lunsford said he is certain she was abducted "because I know my daughter. She is not much different than anybody else's. If they are in a good home, there is no reason for them to leave."

But Ronda Hemminger Evan of the Citrus County Sheriff's Department said, "We have not narrowed that down. That is probably what is most frustrating about this case right now. When we can get going on a good direction -- when we know if she left the home on her own, or if we know she was taken from the home -- that is going to be a break for us to help us single-down our leads."

Evan said the sheriff's department will bring in specialists in an effort to determine if the child was abducted by someone she knows or by a stranger.

Evan confirmed the father and grandfather had taken a computer voice stress test that is "not quite a polygraph" but would not say if the two had passed those tests.

Over the weekend, Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy said the family had been given polygraph tests in addition to the voice stress tests and that they showed "no deception" on the polygraphs.

She said it is common "to start in the home first because what we want to do is find out her routine." Then, she said, "we want to talk to the people who live there, who are around her, neighbors, people who came in contact with her. That is going to give you the best information on what we have, what are we working with."

Evan said searchers will continue to look for the girl, but if she is not found investigators will begin shutting down their command center at a nearby church and begin a process to "retrace" their steps and assess the evidence that has been gathered.

Police are hoping a $25,000 reward, posted by Atlanta Braves pitcher Mike Hampton and his wife, Katia, will lead to information about the girl's whereabouts. The Hamptons are residents of Homosassa.

Jessica -- who is 4 feet, 10 inches tall, weighs 70 pounds and has light brown hair -- was last reported wearing a pink nightgown. She was last seen at 10 p.m. Wednesday by her grandmother, who put her to bed in her home in Homosassa, a community of about 2,300 on the Gulf Coast, about 60 miles north of Tampa.

There was no sign of forced entry at the girl's home. However, Dawsy said the front door of the home had been left unlocked.

He said the only thing missing from the girl's room is a doll, which he would not describe.

More than 400 volunteers turned out Sunday in the pouring rain to help law enforcement officers search for the girl. Joined by search dogs, officers on horseback and on four-wheel vehicles, the searchers spent the day searching the rural area within a three-mile radius of the house where the girl was last seen.

In advance of the stormy weather overnight, a helicopter used heat-seeking radar to search.

One possible lead ended in disappointment Sunday when authorities said a girl who appears in a photograph captured by a convenience store surveillance camera is not Jessica.

The Citrus County Sheriff's Department released the photograph Sunday afternoon and asked the public to help identify the girl in the video. But authorities said later they had identified the two people in the video, and they are not related to the girl's case.


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