Somer Thomson,Somer Thompson Autopsy
October 23, 2009
Somer Thomson,Somer Thompson Autopsy:Officials say investigators tailed nine garbage trucks from Thompson’s Florida neighborhood to a Georgia landfill and then picked through the trash as each rig spilled its load.
They sorted through more than 225 tons of garbage before the little girl’s body was found.
At a news conference, Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler said the quick discovery of Somer’s body, two days after she disappeared, may have saved precious evidence that could lead to her killer.
“Had we not done this tactic,” Beseler said. “I believe that body would have been buried beneath hundreds of tons of debris, probably would have gone undiscovered forever.”
Searching landfills is common when children disappear, but it is unusual to try to zero in on them more efficiently by tracking a neighborhood’s garbage trucks, said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Somer vanished on her one-mile walk home from school Monday in a heavily populated residential area, about a mile from a stretch of fast-food restaurants and other businesses, in the Jacksonville suburb of Orange Park.
Searchers combed the area before investigators, following garbage trucks that collected trash Tuesday, spotted her lifeless legs in a landfill about 50 miles away.
