Online Plea for Daughter Is Issued

The parents of a missing University of Vermont student, in a video posted online Tuesday, pleaded for help in finding their daughter as the search for her intensified.

“I beg of everyone that hears this broadcast, if they know anything at all about where my daughter, Michelle, is today, or where she might have been Friday night, Saturday morning, they tell us instantly,” John-Charles Quinn said in the video posted on the Burlington Police Department website.

Michelle Gardner-Quinn, 21, disappeared Saturday as she walked from downtown to her campus dormitory. She has not been heard from since. She was reported missing Saturday when she failed to meet her parents, who were in town for the weekend visiting from the Arlington, Va., area.

About 150 people attended a vigil at the university Tuesday. One sign read, “I Am Scared,” and another one, “Somebody saw something. Spread the word. We want Michelle back.”

“It’s sad,” said friend Abby Carpenter, 20, of Greenwich, Conn., crying and holding a white candle. “I wish they could find her.”

Federal agents and National Guard pilots met with local police, state police detectives and sex crimes investigators about the search.

“Over the past 24 hours we have received a number of helpful leads that have sent the investigation in a specific direction,” police said.

Police previously said that one lead involved a man in a white Subaru-style hatchback who reportedly tried to offer a woman a ride home about 20 minutes after Gardner-Quinn was last seen.

University of Vermont President Daniel Mark Fogel said in a campuswide e-mail that patrols had been increased on campus and in dormitories, and all “campus life safety systems” were up and running.

“As this very serious situation continues to unfold, I write to express both the university’s distress about an apparent threat to one of our own, and our firm resolve to do all we can to assist the ongoing investigation, support the family, and keep our community fully informed,” Fogel wrote.