December 23, 2024 10:48 AM

Jessica Ridgeway: Body Found During Search, Police Investigating [VIDEO]

Colorado police have been on the search for Jessica Ridgeway a 10-year-old girl that went missing Friday in the Denver suburb of Arvada. In the most recent turn of events, Fox News reported that Colorado police said they found a body in the area in which Ridgeway went missing.

Authorities said that the young girl was kidnapped on her way to school by an unknown person. Thus far they have only found her backpack and water bottle, six miles from Ridgeway's home. Ridgeway was last seen by her mother before leaving for school.

Though police have not yet confirmed whether or not the body belongs to Ridgeway, according to KDVR.com it was found in Pattridge Park Open Space on Wednesday near a mining shack that has been abandoned.

Trevor Materasso, Westminster police spokesman said that police have not been able to link the found body with that of Ridgway.

According to CBS News, Jessica Ridgeway's mother, Sarah Ridgeway said "her daughter woke up at 7:45 a.m. Friday as usual and ate a granola bar before leaving to meet friends at a park about a block away for their walk to Witt Elementary School. Police say Sarah Ridgeway, a night-shift worker, was asleep and missed a call from school reporting Jessica absent."

CBS News reported that she woke up at approximately 4 p.m. where she got a message from school officials. She then went to the park and contacted her daughter's friends before going to police. Ridgeway apparently never ended up meeting her friends that morning.

The Huffington Post reported that police are looking for connections between this case and a kidnapping of an 11-year-old girl in Cody, Wyoming which is approximately 500 miles north.

In that case, a man kidnapped the young girl into his car saying that he needed help finding his puppy. He released her four hours later and hunters discovered her. The suspect in that case, the Huffington Post reports was "a white man, between 55 and 60 years old, with short, strawberry-blond or white hair and a neatly trimmed mustache."

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