D.C. police are teaming up with other agencies on a renewed search for Relisha Rudd, the 8-year-old girl who disappeared from a city homeless shelter two years ago. News4’s Darcy Spencer reports on where investigators are focusing their search.
Police in Washington, D.C., are searching the National Arboretum in their renewed efforts to find 8-year-old Relisha Rudd, who vanished from a city homeless shelter over two years ago.
Police Chief Cathy Lanier said search teams spent Wednesday combing through the arboretum in Northeast Washington. The search is suspended for the day and will continue Thursday morning, when divers will search a large body of water there.
"It's not a large body of water, but it will take the divers some time to get through it," Lanier said at a news confernce Wednesday morning.
Lanier said the search area is based on information investigators received.
Rudd was last seen March 1, 2014, at a Northeast D.C. motel just down the street from the arboretum with 51-year-old Kahlil Tatum, a janitor at the homeless shelter where she lived with her mother and three brothers.
The 8-year-old's family had allowed her to spend time with Tatum before her disappearance, and she appeared to have been missing for weeks before officials realized she was gone. Rudd, a second-grader, hadn't been seen at Payne Elementary School since the month before her disappearance.
No one has been charged in her disappearance.
DC Police to search small body of water at Arboretum in new search for #RelishaRudd pic.twitter.com/wHakxqaIi4
— Kristin Wright (@kwrightnbc4) April 6, 2016
The day after a missing persons report was filed, Tatum's wife, Andrea Denise Tatum, was found dead in a motel in Oxon Hill, Maryland. A few days later, Tatum was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Kenilworth Park.
Police have said Tatum purchased a shovel, lime and contractor-sized trash bags, and spent a significant amount of time at Kenilworth Park around the time Rudd was last seen. Investigators have looked into the possibility Tatum killed Rudd and buried her in the park, but her body was never found.
In the two years since her disappearance, investigators and K-9 teams have searched multiple sites, including a construction site and the Anacostia River.
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The last search for Rudd was conducted in December 2015 when dozens of police officers, federal agents and police dogs scoured a construction site in Northeast Washington. Nothing significant was found during the seven-hour search.
The report did suggest, however, more than two dozen recommended policy changes on issues including how schools deal with unexcused absences, background checks for homeless shelter employees, and fraternization between families and shelter staff.
