What do we know about Summer Wells? Updates on Amber Alert for missing Tennessee girl
Days after crews started to scour difficult terrain in their search for a 5-year-old who went missing in Tennessee, local operations are being scaled back in hopes that a more rested team can step in.
The search for Summer Moon-Utah Wells has also led investigators to seek the driver of a pickup truck seen in the rural part of Hawkins County where the girl went missing.
The person behind the wheel of the vehicle — “possibly a 1998-2000 maroon or red Toyota Tacoma, with a full bed ladder rack along with white buckets in the truck bed” — could have spotted something related to Summer’s disappearance, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Saturday in a news release.
“It’s really strange that I’ve never seen this truck,” Candus Bly, the mother of the missing girl, told WJHL on Monday. “And I’ve never heard of it until just recently, but I wish they would come forward and explain themselves. If you’re not a suspect, at least come forward and say what you’ve seen.”
Summer was last seen gardening with her family before she went inside her house to play, her father said. She was reported missing the night of June 15.
The next day, a statewide Amber Alert was issued as officials tried to figure out what happened to the girl. Crews descended upon her Ben Hill Road neighborhood, roughly 30 miles from the North Carolina state line, McClatchy News reported.
“The rugged mountainous terrain continues to cause problems,” the Church Hill Rescue Squad wrote Sunday in a Facebook post. “This slows search operations down in these areas but rest assured, while encountering these conditions, we are still searching with an aggressive approach with extreme attention to detail.”
The rescue group said more than 100 agencies from six states have helped in the search. Now, it plans to “scale back search operations” as the focus turns to more specialized efforts and resources from outside the region.
As of Friday, state investigators said they had received 394 tips, none of which “resulted in a solid lead.” But by Monday, officials reported getting more than 560 tips as they continued to ask the public for information about Summer.
She is about 3 feet fall, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She may have been wearing a pink shirt, gray pants and no shoes when she went missing, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
“We have been working around the clock to identify anyone who may have been in the area around the time 5-year-old Summer Wells disappeared to determine what they may have seen or heard, no matter how insignificant it may have seemed to them at the time,” the agency said. “Every detail is important.”
In a Monday night interview, Bly told WJHL she thinks her daughter was abducted and hopes she will return home unharmed.
“I feel in my heart that somebody has came up here and took her … has lured her away from here,” Bly said, according to the TV station.
Officials previously wouldn’t release specific details about the ongoing case but said “should we develop information that she was abducted and have suspect and vehicle specifics to provide, we will share it with the public immediately,” McClatchy News reported.
Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-TBI-FIND.
This story was originally published June 29, 2021 at 9:45 AM with the headline "What do we know about Summer Wells? Updates on Amber Alert for missing Tennessee girl."
