Eighteen-year-old barista Samantha Koenig has been missing for more than a week, kidnapped on a dark, snowy Alaska evening from the parking-lot coffee stand where she worked.
Her father, at times, has feared the worst.
“I am hitting every place I can possibly think of to get any tip or inclination,” James Koenig was quoted as saying by the Anchorage Daily News. “I’ve got to start thinking, where would I dump the … body if I were this guy?”
The community is in fear, too, for the employees who staff many of the other coffee kiosks that dot the Anchorage area.
Samantha Koenig was taken from the Common Grounds Espresso stand, in the parking lot of an Anchorage fitness club, around 8 p.m. on February 1, according to reports. Police have told local media that security footage shows an armed man wearing a dark hoodie entering the shop and taking Koenig away. Gone, too, was the cash from the stand’s register, as well as Koenig’s coat, purse and cell phone, reports say.
The abductor’s face was not visible, police have told the media, and they have not released the video, saying they want to preserve its usefulness to any possible prosecution.
“There is an evidentiary nature to those videos that were taken in by these security cameras and they can be used later on in court,” police spokesman Lt. Dave Parker is quoted as saying by KTVA.com. “But if we are to present them now it would have the effect of tainting the jury.”
The owners of the coffee stand, Tyler and Michelle Duncan, have seen the video. They reported the case to police after arriving at their business the morning after Koenig’s abduction, according to the Daily News.
“This perpetrator took obvious and deliberate means to avoid being captured on video,” Tyler Duncan told the Anchorage paper.
via Young barista’s abduction sparks fear in Anchorage – This Just In – CNN.com Blogs.
