AMBER ALERT - Southern Indiana

Amber Alert Issued For 10-Year-Old Indiana Girl Missing Since Tuesday Email to a Friend Printer Friendly Version

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(CROTHERSVILLE, Ind., January 27th, 2005, 1:30 p.m.) -- An Amber Alert has now been issued in the continuing search for a 10-year-old Indiana girl who has been missing for two days.

Katlyn Collman was reported missing at 8 o'clock Tuesday night. She was last seen four hours earlier near the Dollar Store and Crothersville Community School at the corner of Preston and Oak in Crothersville.

An Amber Alert was issued for Katlyn at 1:15 p.m. Thursday. She's four-foot-six inches tall, weighs 120 pounds, and has brown hair and brown eyes.

When last seen, Katlyn was wearing a red short sleeve shirt, black stretch pants with white stripes and a medium light blue winter jacket.

The Crothersville Police Department says Katlyn was likely abducted by an unknown suspect, but they're looking for a very slim white male, between five-foot-eight and six-foot tall, 18 to 20 years old, with short dark hair, fair complexion.

The suspect's vehicle is believed to be a white late 80s Ford F-150 pickup truck, last seen in the Crothersville area.

If you have any information on Katlyn Collman, please contact Crothersville Police Department at 1-888-58AMBER

Katlyn was reported missing at 8 o'clock Tuesday night. She was last seen four hours earlier near a store and Crothersville Community School at the corner of Preston and Oak in Crothersville.

An Amber Alert was issued for Katlyn at 1:15 p.m. Thursday. She's four-foot-six inches tall, weighs 120 pounds, and has brown hair and brown eyes.

When last seen, Katlyn was wearing a red short sleeve shirt, black stretch pants with white stripes and a medium light blue winter jacket.

Her family last saw her about 4 p.m. as she walked to a store about three blocks from her home to buy toilet paper, police said.

A clerk told police that the girl bought the toilet paper, and an acquaintance talked to her about a block from the store as she headed home.

"Those last couple of blocks, something happened," Jackson County Sheriff Jerry Hounshel said.

A witness told investigators that Collman was seen riding in the pickup truck with a driver described as a very skinny white man, between 18 and 20 years old, about 6 feet tall with short dark hair and fair complexion.

The witness told police that Collman, a fourth-grader at Crothersville Elementary, looked like a normal passenger in the truck.

"There was no sign of her being held against her will or trying to get out," said Sgt. Jerry Goodin of Indiana State Police.

He said investigators believed the driver was a stranger because they had not been able to find anyone in the town of about 1,500 people who could identify the truck or the driver.

The suspect's vehicle is believed to be a white late 80s Ford F-150 pickup truck, last seen in the Crothersville area.

If you have any information on Katlyn Collman, please contact Crothersville Police Department at 1-888-58AMBER.

Would someone be so kind as to post the composite sketch too......here's the link!

http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=2865083&nav=0RZEVfgw

Missing girl's body found
Case treated as murder; Indiana town stunned

Katlyn "Katie" Collman disappeared while running an errand Tuesday in Crothersville, Ind. An Amber Alert was issued Thursday once the case met all of the necessary criteria. Her body was found yesterday.

By Marcus Green
magreen@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

CROTHERSVILLE, Ind. -- A 10-year-old Crothersville girl missing since Tuesday was found dead yesterday morning about 20 miles north of where she disappeared while running an after-school errand. Police are investigating the case as a murder.

Neighbors and friends who held out hope that Katlyn "Katie" Collman would return home alive learned instead that her body had been discovered in a creek leading from Cypress Lake near Interstate 65.

News of her death moved quickly through the town of 1,570 and immediately seemed to sober a close-knit place where churches outnumber traffic lights and where some residents admitted that they had never worried about their children's safety.

Investigators said an Indiana State Police officer found Katie's body in a remote area about five miles north of Seymour while searching for the girl and her abductor. Authorities would not discuss the cause or time of death.

During a news conference yesterday afternoon at the fire station in Crothersville, which had become a command post for the search, state police Sgt. Jerry Goodin said investigators have new leads but declined to discuss them.

Police continued to search for a man they think was the last person seen with Katie after she went to the Dollar General store near her home and did not return.

That man is described as white and very thin, 5-foot-9 to 6-foot-1, with short, dark hair. He was said to be driving a white, late-1980s or early-1990s Ford F-150 pickup.

A $10,000 reward has been offered for the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in Katie's death.

"We do believe that she was abducted by a stranger ... because we cannot identify the pickup truck or the person who was in the pickup truck," Goodin said.

An autopsy is scheduled for this morning in Louisville, Jackson County Coroner Andy Rumph said.

Anyone with information on the case is asked to call the Jackson County Sheriff's Department at (812) 358-2141 or the Indiana State Police in Seymour at (812) 522-1441.

Katie's abduction shocked parents and children in Crothersville.

"My kids -- now that this has happened -- they are not allowed outside, even in our yard, without me or their dad there," said Cheryl Baker, who was walking with her children on East Howard Street, several blocks from where Katie vanished. "They won't be allowed to do nothing unless they have us with them."

"I never thought it would happen in Crothersville because it's a small town," said Baker's 9-year-old daughter, Whitney, who rode bicycles with Katie.

Whitney said Katie was a friend who, if somebody lost a stuffed animal, "She would come up and say, 'there are more animals,' and stuff like that."

Another classmate, 10-year-old Patrick Sweazy, said he wanted Katie to be remembered as happy.

"She was just nice," said Patrick, who spoke softly to reporters outside the fire station.

Police began searching for Katie after she was reported missing, and an Amber Alert was released on Thursday, about 1½ days after she disappeared.

Crothersville Police Chief Norman Ford said he requested an alert Tuesday night but the case did not meet all the criteria. Once authorities had a description of the man seen with Katie and of the pickup, there was sufficient information for an alert.

Goodin said Indiana's 20 previous notifications under the Amber Alert system led to missing children being found alive.

"This is the first Amber Alert that we've had in which we have brought home a dead person," Goodin said.

Terry Goodin, superintendent of the Crothersville schools and Sgt. Goodin's brother, said counselors would be available at the town's elementary school today.

"We're all deeply saddened by this horrendous act that's taken place on one of our students," Terry Goodin said.

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