SAN DIEGO – Police took off their protectives suits and put down their rakes at the Miramar landfill Monday, ending a grueling and unprecedented chapter in the 12-day investigation into 2-year-old Jahi Turner's disappearance.
Hours later, volunteer search efforts were called off, diminishing hopes that the child reported missing April 25 might be found alive.
At the landfill, up to 100 officers a day had worked almost around the clock since last Tuesday, sifting 5,000 tons of trash collected from the area where the boy was said to have disappeared.
"It's been a huge effort by a lot of people," police spokesman Dave Cohen said after the search was ended around 1 p.m. "I've been in town for 25 years and I don't recall ...any similar operation that took as much manpower for as long a period of time and was as needle-in-a-haystack as you can get."
Police would not say what prompted the intensive search or what they were looking for, but it appears they didn't find it. Cohen said some items "of interest" were uncovered, but he wouldn't discuss what they were. A TV news camera caught footage of officers examining what looked like a Winnie the Pooh blanket and bath mat. Jahi's family has said that Winnie the Pooh was one of the toddler's favorite cartoon characters.
"We didn't find anything earth-shattering," Cohen said. "I think it's still to be determined whether (the search) turned up anything, but it was something that had to be done.
"I don't think anyone would say it was not worth the effort, because if we don't search and something is there that we could have found, we've been derelict."
Later in the day, organizers reluctantly pulled the plug on a massive volunteer search effort in which more than 1,100 volunteers scoured 18 square miles of canyons and handed out 28,000 fliers over 40 square miles of the city.
"We've saturated all the areas," said coordinator Bill Garcia. "Without any new information, it's going to be kind of difficult to go into any new areas."
The search center, a Moose Lodge at 30th and Date streets, will remain in use temporarily, but volunteers are no longer being asked to come in, Garcia said.
Jahi's disappearance is San Diego's second high-profile missing-child case since February. The boy's stepfather, Tieray Jones, told police the boy vanished from a small playground at 28th and Cedar streets around 2:30 p.m. April 25. Jones said he left the child to get a soda, and when he returned, Jahi was gone.
