This is the first time I will be writing a blog post focusing on an individual missing person. I have been following this case with regularity since the day this girl disappeared. There is a great deal of mystery and speculation surrounding her disappearance, which police have classified as a kidnapping, so I decided to put my own thoughts about it down here.
Sierra Lamar vanished on March 16th. She lives with her mother, Marlene Lamar, and her mother's boyfriends, Rick Gardener, in Morgan Hill, CA. Until October of 2011, Sierra lived with her father Steve Lamar in Fremont CA. It is from her mother's home that she disappeared from. According to forensic evidence recovered from Sierra's computer, she was on her Twitter account at 6:29am on the morning of the 16th of March, where she re-tweeted an update from a friend. At 7:11 she sent a text message to a friend. The content of the text message has not been made public, but law enforcement has stated that there was nothing pertinent to the investigation contained in the text message. Sometime in between her last Twitter post and her last text message, she allegedly snapped this photo of herself with her computer:
Sierra's mother states that she last saw her daughter on March 16th, just before she left for work at approximately 6am. Marlene Lamar works as a hand therapist in Fremont and must leave early to commute to work. Rick Gardener works in construction, it has been reported that he left before Marlene, as well as after Marlene, law enforcement has not clarified this to the media. Marlene Lamar states she left for work and the Sierra would normally leave for the bus stop at about 7:15, with the bus arriving to pick her up at about 7:25am. The bus driver reports that he never saw her that day. Her mother was unaware that her daughter missed school that entire day, not realizing that anything was wrong until her texts that afternoon were going unanswered. She drove home from work, reportedly at about 3:45, arriving in Morgan Hill at approximately 4:30.
Having not received any responses to her text messages to Sierra, Ms. Lamar states she drove to the school to see if Sierra had possibly missed the bus. However, her daughter was not at the school, so she states she began making phone calls to Sierra's friends. At approximately 6pm Marlene Lamar received an automated e-mail notification from the school Sierra attended, informing her that her child had missed that day of classes.
It was at this point that Marlene Lamar contacted the police in Morgan Hill to report her daughter missing. It was initially speculated that Sierra may have run away, despite having a outwardly stable home life. Sierra had been vocally unhappy on her social media sites about having moved from Fremont to Morgan Hill, and switching schools. 15 year old girls can take their unhappiness to the extreme, and have been known to run away from home when things are not going their way. However, it has been determined that Sierra did not have a history of being a runaway teen and did have a very active social life, as well as being very close to her father and older sister Danielle.
On March 17th, Sierra's Android Smartphone was found on the side of the road about a mile from her home. This fact was not released to the media for three days after the discovery, however it was the first real clue in the investigation. It has been reported by law enforcement and local media outlets that the phone showed signs of damage, as if having been thrown from a vehicle. The area where it was found, along with the entire area that Sierra lived in, was very rural and somewhat secluded. The cell phone was found in the OPPOSITE direction that Sierra would have traveled in order to make it to her bus stop that morning. The following day, Sunday March 19th, searchers found Sierra's school books and purse, a black and pink Juicy Couture bag that she carried with her. Inside the bag were the clothes Sierra was thought to have been wearing that morning, "neatly folded" according to all reports. This information was also not released to the public for a period of about 5 days, while police confirmed it was her bag and that the contents belonged to Sierra. The bag was found about a mile further down the same road the cell phone was discovered on. However, while the cell phone appeared to have been thrown from a vehicle, the bag and books were stashed in between an old building and a large cactus. Police used the term "secreted" when describing the location of the bag and books.
It has become difficult to ascertain at this point, but the shirt in the "last photo" above is believed to be the shirt Sierra was wearing the morning she vanished. This is not based on any witness statements however, simply on the logical deduction that since the picture was taken on the computer that morning, she most likely left the home wearing that shirt. The shirt in question is a dark blue/black San Jose Sharks sweatshirt. The shirt reported to be "neatly folded" inside the purse has been called a Sharks tee shirt, jersey and shirt, but unless Sierra had more than one shirt like this, it stands to reason that they are same shirt. It was after the discovery of the clothing in the bag that police classified her disappearance as "involuntary".
Since her purse was found, complete with her "neatly folded" garments inside, speculation in the blogging community has gone wild. Every imaginable scenario has been covered and some are compelling. But law enforcement has remained very tight lipped. They have done searches with tracking dogs and cadaver dogs, in grassy fields and bodies of water and have turned up nothing that they have reported to the media as pertinent to the case.
This case bothers me a great deal, as all missing children's cases do. Sierra's friends and family have started a Facebook page aimed at keeping awareness alive and keeping Sierra's face in everyone's minds, you can find that here: Help Find Sierra Lamar.
There are touching statements posted here by Sierra's sister and friends. It is important that we utilize the tools at hand in these modern times, things like Facebook and Twitter can be amazing tools when it comes to spreading information. Please like their page and share it with your friends, you never know which share will be the one that matters. Thanks for reading, and let's all keep the hope alive for Sierra as well as all the other missing kids and adults in the world.
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