Although the search for missing UND student Dru Sjodin wrapped up in North Dakota on Saturday, National Guard soldiers in Minnesota continued to scour the frozen landscape in a mission they had dubbed "Operation Deliberate Search" for a few more hours Sunday morning.
"There were a few little holes we wanted to finish out," said Lt. Col. Eric Waage, who helped organize the search, and was working Sunday to pack equipment used throughout the three-day search in the National Guard Armory in Crookston.
He said they covered about 75 percent of the ground they hoped to Saturday, so they finished searching the other quarter of the search area in a few hours early Sunday morning. But the additional searching yielded no sign of Sjodin.
The Minnesota National Guard quit searching late Saturday afternoon, as weather conditions worsened throughout the day, but they weren't willing to say they were finished until they checked out a few more areas.
Sunday's search involved about 60 soldiers running Humvees around the area, finishing up the areas they had hoped to cover and revisiting some areas they thought could be searched more thoroughly.
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After hiking through culverts and ditches filled with waist-deep snow, they found no trace of Sjodin, whom officials believe was abducted from the Columbia Mall parking lot on Nov. 22.
Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 50, a convicted rapist released from prison earlier this year, is charged in Sjodin's abduction. Rodriguez says he is innocent, and remains jailed in Grand Forks on $5 million bond.
The Grand Forks County Sheriff's Department, host agency in the three-week search for Sjodin, said Saturday there would be no more large-scale searches until evidence or information from the suspect himself provides new direction.
Thorough search
Waage, who has helped in missing persons searches before, said many of the soldiers decided to search for Sjodin as they would if she was their own sister, and were disappointed that they didn't bring her home.
"But we did the best we could with the conditions we had," Waage said. "The troops are wired to accomplish a mission, and they did - a thorough search of the area."
And as Pfc. Jacob Larson and a few others continued to pack a van with mapping equipment they had used throughout the weekend to plan and revise their search, he said although they didn't bring Sjodin home, he was proud to be out helping.
Ditches and fields
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The National Guard began its search Friday, scouring farmland and ditches, sometimes filled with up to six feet of snow, on foot and in vehicles.
About 172 Guard members from Minnesota participated in the search Friday and Saturday, Polk County Sheriff Mark LeTexier said. Areas searched throughout the three days included much of Polk County and parts of Pennington and Red Lake counties.
Guardsmen also utilized underwater cameras to look in the Red and Red Lake rivers.
Investigators in the search were trying to retrace the steps of Rodriguez, which is why they concentrated much of their effort under the Thompson bridge on Friday and Saturday. That's part of a route between Grand Forks and Crookston, where Rodriguez lived with his mother.
