Missing Oceanside Girl Seen With Couple in Colorado

The search for Leticia Hernandez of Oceanside turned west after a sighting of the 7-year-old girl in Durango, Colo., was reported to FBI agents.

Before the latest sighting in a Durango convenience store Jan. 23, she had been last reported at a grocery store in Mobile, Ala., on Jan. 19, officials said.

Bob Pence, agent in charge of the FBI in Colorado, said a clerk in the convenience store reported that a little girl and a white woman entered the store about 10:30 a.m. that day. The woman asked to use the bathroom, and, a short time later, a white man came into the store and told the clerk to go get the woman and child. The three of them then left in a dirty, red, mid-’70s Ford pickup, Pence said.

FBI agents interviewed the clerk, who identified Leticia through a picture and said the two adults resembled the sketches of the suspects who are believed to have abducted her.

Pence said the only difference was that the man had his hair in a ponytail. The clerk also saw the tattoo of a cross on the back of the man’s hand. Pence called this latest sighting “credible.”

He said the case has received considerable publicity in Colorado, and that news of the Durango sighting prompted about half a dozen calls about other sightings.

Pence said the little girl appeared frightened. “She was not talkative, but she did not appear to be injured,” he said.

Pence added that the FBI has learned that the couple may have once been involved in the ski resort business. He said resorts in Colorado have been alerted to the possibility that the couple may be in the area.

Durango is in southwestern Colorado, about 100 miles northeast of Four Corners, where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado meet.

Leticia disappeared from the front steps of her family’s Bush Street apartment Dec. 16.