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DICKINSON, N.D. (AP)
— Police say a dive team found nothing during a search of a North
Dakota lake for signs of three missing college softball players .
Dickinson
Police Lt. Dave Wallace said Tuesday that a search of a youth fishing
area also found no trace of the Dickinson State University students. The
women are identified as Kyrstin Gemar, 22, of San Diego; Afton Williamson,
20, of Lake Elsinore, Calif.; and Ashley Neufeld, 21, of Brandon,
Manitoba in Canada. The three were believed to be in a white 1997 Jeep
Cherokee with California plates when they were last heard from late
Sunday night.
Gemar's father has said his daughter and her
teammates often went star gazing on Patterson lake, just southwest of
Dickinson, about 60 miles east of the Montana state line. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. DICKINSON,
N.D. (AP) — The father of one of three missing college softball players
said Tuesday the women often went star gazing near a lake in
southwestern North Dakota where authorities continued to search by
plane and boat for the students. Lenny Gemar told ABC's "Good
Morning America" in a telephone interview that the Dickinson State
University students would hang out by Patterson Lake near the city and
"just look up at the stars and, you know, chat about the things that
teenagers will chat about." Police have refused to speculate on
what might have happened to Kyrstin Gemar, 22, of Grossmont, Calif.;
Afton Williamson, 20, of Lake Elsinore, Calif.; and Ashley Neufeld, 21,
of Brandon, Manitoba in Canada. The women were believed to be in a
white 1997 Jeep Cherokee with California plates when they were last
heard from late Sunday night, authorities said. Dickinson Police
Lt. Dave Wallace has said a friend of the women received two telephone
calls from them, about one minute apart, before the line cut out on
Sunday. Police described the first one as a "very scratchy" call for
help that mentioned the women were near a lake and water. The
friend who received the calls called 911 to report that the women
needed help, police said. Foul play was not suspected but was not being
ruled out, police said in a statement. Dickinson Police Officer
Thomas Grosz said the search for the women resumed Tuesday morning with
at least three airplanes. He said members of the fire department also
were taking a boat out on Patterson Lake, just southwest of Dickinson,
a city of 16,000 people about 100 miles west of Bismarck and 60 miles
east of the Montana state line. Police also said they searched the
women's rooms and were interviewing their classmates, friends and
people near Killdeer, north of Dickinson. "It's scary. It's just a
numbing feeling that you have for those kids. There's just so many
questions — you're almost speechless because you don't know much," said
Dickinson State softball coach Guy Fridley. Lenny Gemar said he
and his wife arrived in North Dakota late Monday night to try to help
find his daughter, Kyrstin, and her teammates. He said they were met at
the airport by a university official and updated on the case and
investigators' efforts. "They haven't found anything that I'm
aware of," he said. "No tire tracks, no clothing ... nothing at all to
give us any indication where the girls ended up."
Gemar said he
had not spoken with the friend who said she received the distress
calls, but it didn't initially appear the girls were being attacked. "There
was nothing to indicate that there was an assailant or anything like
that going on," he said. "It just comes across as sounding more like an
accident of some kind."
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