SPRING — Alexandria Lowitzer seems to have vanished without a trace. No phone calls, no text messages, no goodbye letter to indicate she was upset and wanted to get away. No obvious reason for her to be upset.
The last time anyone saw the 16-year-old teen from Spring, she was getting off the school bus April 26, only a few feet from her home on Low Ridge Road.
Since May 1, the Laura Recovery Center for Missing Children, a nonprofit organization based in Friendswood, has organized a massive onsite search effort that has so far drawn approximately 200 volunteers to comb the extensive wooded area behind the Lowitzer residence.
“We had a horse team out in the woods through the Greater Houston Search Dog Team, and they also brought a dog to do some tracking and trailing,” said Bob Walcutt, executive director of the Laura Recovery Center, which was contacted by Lowitzer’s family. “So far, we have nothing to hang our hat on. We had some tips, different leads, but nothing concrete.”
The Houston Police Mounted Patrol covered a large portion of the wooded expanse, assisting Precinct 4 Constable’s deputies and Harris County Sheriff’s officials in the recovery effort, Walcutt said, and two men volunteered to search the area on ATVs.
“We’re literally covering areas where someone could take a person, commit a crime and (leave) them — large, wooded areas, ponds, creeks,” he said. “Around here, there are a lot of places like that, and so far we have found nothing. We’re still no further along than we were on the first day.”
Runaway?
Walcutt said his organization generally doesn’t get involved in runaway cases, which is still the current status assigned to Lowitzer’s disappearance by law enforcement.
“If we knew for sure this was a runaway, we would not be physically here right now,” he said. “But Alexandria apparently lives on her phone, uses her text messaging all the time. When she left, everything stopped once she got off that bus — everything. There has been no activity on that phone since then, which leads to the possibility that something may have happened to her at that point.”
Officials believe Lowitzer was on her way to pick up her paycheck from work, only half a mile from her home, after she got off the school bus.
Walcutt said law enforcement continues to conduct its investigation, and at this time there is no hard evidence that foul play is involved. At the same time, he said, the complete lack of activity on Ali’s cell phone was enough to convince the Laura Recovery Center to get involved.
“My best hope is that she is a runaway,” he said. “In that case, she can come home and be safe and well. If she’s not a runaway, then all bets are off. In 99 out of 100 cases, everything turns out fine, but it’s that 1 percent that’s worrisome. Bad things do happen.”
Ali Lowitzer is Caucasian, 5 feet 2 inches tall, weighs 145 pounds, has hazel eyes, auburn hair, braces on her upper and lower teeth and a faint scar from chicken pox between her eyes.
For more information, visit www.facebook.com/l/5969b or www.lrcf.org.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by marakisses
