Search For Missing Iowa Boy Continues For 3rd Day

LA PORTE CITY, IA — A massive search for a missing 16-year-old boy with autism continued Tuesday in La Porte City after he disappeared Saturday night. Hundreds of volunteers have turned out with ATVs, UTVs and on horses to help look for Jake Wilson, but so far have not found a trace of the teen.

Wilson told his parents he was going for a walk to Wolf Creek, located about two blocks from his home, around 9 p.m. Saturday. When he didn’t return, his family began searching and notified authorities. His mother told reporters that he has autism and a mild intellectual disorder and functions as a 9-year-old.

He is on medication, and his behavior may be changing if the medication is out of his system, La Porte City Police Chief Chris Brecher told reporters at a briefing Tuesday.

"As his mentality changes, his emotions may be changing," Brecher said, and that may cause him to hide from the people looking for him.

On the night he disappeared, temperatures dipped to about 13 degrees and then a thick blanket of snow fell on the area.

“That just punctuates the urgency of what we are trying to do to recover and repatriate this young man back to his family,” Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson told reporters Monday.

The FBI, Iowa’s Division of Criminal Investigation and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children are assisting in the search, though authorities stressed the investigation is not criminal.

“While it’s not criminal in nature, we are still going to process everything as though it’s a crime scene,” Thompson said. “We are going to process every piece of information, we are going to process every found glove or boot or whatever, simply because it allows for a very regimented way of documenting everything that we come across.”

Thompson said “nothing is off the table.”

“We’re still holding out hopes, we’re giving prayers and hoping that we find this young man,” he said. “However, we are realistic in recognizing that after 24 to 48 hours, it’s about time to really ramp up what we’re doing.”

Residents of the area are on edge after the disappearance of Evansdale cousins Elizabeth Collins, 9, and Lyric Cook-Morrissey, 11, just 20 miles away after they went on a bike ride around a popular lake in 2012. The cousins’ bodies were discovered later that year in a wooded area 25 miles north of Evansdale.

Among those who showed up to support the family of the missing teen was Drew Collins, Elizabeth’s father, who received training through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to consult with and offer support to families whose children have disappeared. He volunteers for the organization’s Team Hope.

“I just came to talk to the family and offer my support,” Collins told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. “There’s not a whole lot I can do, but I can empathize with them as somebody who has gone through it before.”

Thompson said the National Center for Missing and Exploiting Children would review any video that might exist on home and business security systems, but said that’s “not any kind of indication” investigators think the teen was a victim of foul play.

Iowa’s Urban Search and Rescue Team used sonar Monday to search the murky waters of the creek, but didn’t find a trace of Wilson. The creek ranges in depth from very shallow to holes that drop down 10 feet or deeper.

“What the sonar is going to allow us to do is look in the nooks and crannies that we couldn’t necessarily send a person down into,” Brecher told reporters.

Volunteers expanded their search to a 9-mile radius of La Porte City.

“We are optimistic, but it’s getting to the point where now we just keep expanding where we’ve been and just keep praying,” La Porte City Police Chief Chris Brecher told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier.

“We don’t have a lot of great things that we found today as far as new information, but we were able to cross a lot of things off our list,” Brecher said. “We know where he’s not, and we’re in the process of elimination now.”

Wilson is about 5 feet, 6 inches tall; weighs 135 pounds; has hazel eyes and ash blond hair. He was last seen wearing a dark brown zip-up jacket, dark sweatpants and cowboy boots. Anyone with information about his whereabouts is asked to call Black Hawk County Dispatch at (319) 291-2515.

Photo via La Porte City Police Department