Family Pleads for Help in Finding Florida Girl

The family of a 9-year-old girl who disappeared from her bedroom pleaded for her return Friday, calling her an angel who needs to be home.

The father and grandparents of Jessica Marie Lunsford cried as they described a girl who they said would never run away.

“I want my daughter home,” said Mark Lunsford, who discovered the third-grader missing Thursday morning.

“If there is anything anybody knows, there are a lot of numbers you can call. Help me find my daughter and bring her home.”

More than 100 police and volunteers, with help from bloodhounds and helicopters, searched the area about 60 miles north of Tampa. The physical search was suspended when darkness fell.

In a late afternoon news conference, Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy said, “We are turning every rock we can turn and following every lead we can possibly follow.”

Jessica lives with her father and his parents.

Her father told authorities he had returned Thursday morning from a girlfriend’s home and was getting ready for work when he realized his daughter’s alarm clock was sounding and she wasn’t there.

The clothes she had laid out for school were still in place and none of her shoes were gone. Dawsy said one item missing from her immaculate room was a doll, which he declined to describe.

Jessica’s grandmother, Ruth Lunsford, said the girl was a well-mannered child “who doesn’t roam.”

“When God made Jessie, he made an angel,” her grandmother said. “We have always called her princess.”

Mark Lunsford said his daughter had had little contact with her mother, who lives in Ohio and was being interviewed by the FBI. Michael Brooks, an FBI spokesman in Cincinnati, would not comment on what the FBI discussed with Angela Bryant but said she had not been arrested or detained.

“I don’t know where she is,” Bryant, 31, of Morrow, Ohio, told Associated Press in a tearful telephone interview Friday.

Bryant said she hadn’t seen her daughter in four years. “Her dad didn’t let me see her,” she said.

A national missing child alert was issued for Jessica, who is described as: white, 4-foot-10, 70 pounds, with light brown shoulder-length hair and brown eyes.