Police began searching an Indiana landfill Tuesday in connection with the disappearance of Lauren Spierer, the 20-year-old Indiana University student from Westchester County who vanished June 3 after a night out with friends.
The search, which Bloomington Police Captain Joe Qualters said could last up to two weeks, comes more than two months after Spierer went missing and weeks after the public, upon learning the landfill had not yet been searched, launched a massive campaign to have it done.
Qualters said in a statement that police began planning to search the Sycamore Ridge landfill, where all Bloomington trash ends up, in the days following Spierer’s disappearance but opted to continue land searches until arrangements could be finalized.
Qualters said landfill managers isolated the trash that came from the area where Spierer was last seen and no additional trash had been allowed near that site in the landfill.
The FBI, Indiana University police, local police and a search expert affiliated with the National Center for Missing and Exploited children will assist in the search. Roughly 20 to 30 law enforcement personnel from each of those agencies will participate daily in the search.
Lauren Spierer’s parents, Charlene and Robert, and her sister, Rebecca, issued a statement thanking the Bloomington police department for its continued efforts in the search for Lauren.
"Please keep all the members of the Bloomington Police Department and all other law enforcement agencies who are assisting in this incredibly complex undertaking to search the landfill safe,” the statement read.
