Intense Search Fails to Locate Missing Girl, 7

A 7-year-old Newhall girl who disappeared Thursday afternoon was still missing early Friday evening, despite efforts by sheriff’s deputies who searched for her on foot, horseback and in helicopters.

Sara Nan Hodges, a blond, blue-eyed first grader, was last seen about 2 p.m. Thursday with a group of neighborhood children in the front yard of her Newhall house, officials said. The family reported the girl missing at 8 p.m.

After interviewing neighbors and the children she was playing with, deputies used bloodhounds and a helicopter to search for the girl in the rough, brushy, wilderness area across the street from her Alderbrook Drive house.

At daybreak, the search was expanded to include more than 80 officers, including a mounted posse and dozens of deputies on foot, who covered a 2-square-mile area.

Expectations were raised briefly about 3:30 p.m. Friday when authorities, acting on a phone tip, stopped a black Cadillac in which a child matching Sara’s description was a passenger. But family members said it was not her.

The ground search of the wilderness area was called off about 5 p.m. Friday.

“It’s fruitless,” Sheriff’s Sgt. Frank Kasco said. “We have had more than 74 people out there all day, bloodhounds and helicopters, and she is just not there.”

Kasco said officers will continue to search the surrounding residential neighborhood and follow up on any tips. However, Lt. Dennis Burns said they had few other leads to follow.

“Any place a 7-year-old would go, we have been. Friends, relatives, abandoned cars. . . . Somebody either picked her up or she wandered off,” Burns said.

Parents Are Divorced

The parents of the missing girl are divorced but authorities do not believe that the girl was kidnaped by her father, who lives in Ventura County.

Burns said the father, Wallace Scott Mann, first learned that his daughter was missing when law enforcement officials, who thought she might be at his house, called him. Since then, he has been eager to help, Burns said.

Sara’s mother, sister and other relatives stayed inside their house most of Friday afternoon.