ANCHORAGE - More than a week after Clinton Reeves disappeared, police said the search for the senior airman is "difficult."
Reeves, 24, was last seen April 19 while leaving his post at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson for a three-day weekend. When he didn't appear for work the following Monday, base officials became suspicious. After Reeves' rental car was discovered abandoned in the Russian Jack Park neighborhood nearly a week later, the case was handed over the Anchorage Police Department's Homicide Unit.
Lieutenant Dave Parker, a spokesman for the department, said the clock was ticking. Reeves' car, a 2012 red Dodge Avenger, had first been spotted April 23 on the 300 block of McCarrey Street when an unidentified caller complained about a "parking problem." Only after Reeves was reported missing later that week did police identify the vehicle and return to the scene. While they found the airman's personal belongings, paperwork and groceries inside the car, Reeves was nowhere to be found.
Residents of the crowded apartment complexes lining the street said it's not unusual for cars to be abandoned, at least temporarily, along the block, but nobody had recognized the red car or noticed Reeves park it a week ago. Police said they're following up on a tip the airman was looking to purchase a car via Craigslist when he disappeared.
But despite the abandoned Avenger and suspicious circumstances, detectives said they're not investigating the disappearance as a kidnapping.
"We'd have to have some information that the person was kidnapped, such as in the Samantha Koenig case, they did have video surveillance that showed her actually being physcially kidnapped," Parker said.
In Reeves' case, all that remained was an empty car and busy street with no witnesses.
