After nearly a week without results, Texas Equusearch has suspended its search for Christina Morris, a 23-year-old Dallas-area woman who went missing August 30.
The independent search and recovery team used ATVs, horses and even drones to look for Morris, but it didn't find any clues leading to the young woman's whereabouts.
"This is only a suspension, and not a termination of the search," Kevin Cotter said in a statement on Equusearch's website. The Houston-based nonprofit group is waiting for better information from law enforcement before resuming its search.
Surveillance video shows Christina left a friend's apartment at the Shops at Legacy in Plano around 4 am on Labor Day weekend. Since then, no one has seen or heard from her. Calls to Christina's cellphone go straight to voicemail, there's been no activity on her bank account and her car was found nearby without any signs of foul play.
Anna Morris, Christina's stepmother, has helped coordinate volunteers to hand out thousands of fliers, and both Clear Channel and Lamar donated billboard space to the search.
"We just keep trying to come up with more ideas about where to go from here," Morris says. "Every day, I get up and I think, okay, she's going to come home today."
Plano police spokesperson David Tilley says Equusearch's decision to step back from active searches does not impact his department's efforts. "We're using every resource we've got. We're following up on every lead, and we're following up on every tip."
Tilley says that Equusearch has provided an "invaluable" service to the investigation. "They've covered a lot of open land that would have taken us weeks to cover, and they've eliminated a lot of areas where we know she's not," he says.
"It gives us that much more hope that she might be alive somewhere."
Christina Morris, 23, went missing August 30.
