Santa Barbara College Student Brianna Denison Missing in Reno, NV … Man Sought in Disappearance
A 19 year old, Santa Barbara City College student, Brianna Denison is missing in Reno, Nevada. Brianna Denison of Reno was last seen at a home near the University of Nevada, Reno around 4 a.m. Sunday.
Blood was found on the pillow of the missing coed. Also her cell phone and purse were left behind at her friend’s house.
Description:
- 19 year old white female
- five feet tall
- 98 lbs
- long dark hair
- blue eyes
- She may have been wearing light blue or pink sweat pants and a white tank top
If anyone has information on Brianna Denison’s whereabouts, please call Reno Police at (775) 334-2115.
Denison was last seen around 4 a.m. Sunday. A family member says Denison had been out with friends, and went to a friend’s house to sleep on the sofa. A few hours later, Brianna had vanished.
Brianna’s aunt says blood was discovered on Brianna’s pillow. She also says Brianna’s cell phone and purse were left behind at the friend’s house. That house is near Mackay and College, not far from the UNR campus. (Las Vegas Now)
For further updates and to discuss this case go to Scared Monkeys Missing Persons Forum: Brianna Denison.
UPDATE I: Man Sought in Teen’s ‘Suspicious’ Disappearance
Brianna Denison Reported Missing Sunday After Friends Discover Blood on Her Pillow
Authorities have announced that they wanted to talk to an unnamed man in his 40s who may have information in Brianna Denison’s whereabouts. The man dropped Denison’s friend off at the house where she was staying after she failed to get a taxi cab.
A man in a sport utility vehicle picked up one of Denison’s friends around 1 a.m. Sunday at the Sands Regency Hotel Casino after she failed to find a taxi. The driver dropped her at the house where Denison was staying. While the ride was without incident and police are not calling the man a “suspect,” they say that he is a “person of interest” who may know something about the disappearance. “It’s a leaf that’s unturned,” Macdonald said.
Police today released surveillance image of a car driven by a man who they say may know something about Denison’s whereabouts.
Police in Reno, Nev., want to talk to a man they believe may have information about a 19-year-old woman’s “suspicious” disappearance Sunday.
Brianna Denison was last seen around 4 a.m. Sunday when she went to sleep on the sofa at a friend’s house near the University of Nevada in Reno. The two had been at a party at the Sands Regency Hotel Casino earlier in the night. The friend gave Denison a blanket and pillow before going upstairs to bed.
When the friend came downstairs later in the day, Denison was missing and a bloodstain the size of a “silver dollar” was on the pillow she had been using, Lt. Robert Macdonald, a spokesman for the Reno Police Department, told ABC News.
The blood caused some alarm for police, Macdonald said, but the bigger concern was that it appeared Denison had disappeared wearing no shoes and only the sweats and a light shirt she’d worn to bed. Her cell phone and purse had also been left behind.
UPDATE II: Search on for Woman Missing Who Disappeared From Nevada Home
A 19-year-old college student mysteriously vanished from a Reno, Nev., home early Sunday morning, and cops fear she may have been kidnapped.
“We’re treating this as an abduction case right now,” Lt. Robert McDonald of the Reno Police Department told FOX News. “A small amount of blood on her pillow is of interest to us.”
Cops are looking for a tan-colored, later-model GMC or Chevy Suburban and a white male, about 45 years old, who might be of Latin descent.
“He’s certainly a person of interest. We’re treating him as a person of interest, not a suspect,” McDonald said.
The man driving the vehicle had picked up a friend of Denison’s earlier that evening from the party both were attending when the friend was trying to hail a cab and dropped her off without incident at Mackay Court, the residence where she lived and Denison was staying, McDonald told FOXNews.com.
UPDATE III: Friends of Missing Brianna Denison set up FACE BOOK site
Friends of missing teenager Brianna Denison have set up a “Find Bri” page on the popular social networking site Facebook.com.
The page, set up by Ashley Stern of Colorado, shows a photo of the 19-year-old who has been missing since late this weekend.
The page can be found here and encourages anyone with information about Denison to call a number listed at the bottom.
After leaving the casino, police say Brianna returned to a friend’s home at 1395 MacKay Court at around 4 a.m., and was reportedly last seen falling asleep on a couch. The residence is in an area close to the University of Nevada, and is populated mostly by college students living off-campus. That was the last time anyone saw the 19-year-old psychology student.
Earlier that night, a friend, who was also staying at the MacKay Court residence, solicited a ride from an unknown male. The girl arrived home safe and sound, and police say that the journey was without incident.
UPDATE IV: Reno Cops: Missing Student Was Abducted
RENO, Nev. (AP) — Investigators went door to door Tuesday searching for a 19-year-old college student who they believe was kidnapped from a friend’s home over the weekend. Brianna Denison was last seen around 4 a.m. Sunday when she went to sleep on her friend’s couch after a night of partying. She slept near an unlocked glass door and used a 2-foot-tall teddy bear as an extra pillow, police said.
When the friend awoke, Denison and the teddy bear were gone. Her purse, cell phone and clothes, including two pairs of shoes, were undisturbed, police said.
“We have not come up with any other clues, any of the items or anything that would lead us to Brianna at this time,” police Lt. Ron Holladay.
UPDATE V: FBI Joins Search for ‘Abducted’ Teen
Authorities Now Say Brianna Denison Was Likely Taken From Her Friend’s Reno Home
The FBI has joined the investigation into what police now say was likely the abduction of a teenage woman from a friend’s Reno, Nev., home sometime Sunday morning.
Tips, Frady said, continue to come to investigators. “We are continuing to talk to people,” he said. “We are getting information, and we’re continuing to follow those leads.”
Authorities also continue to seek an unnamed man in his 40s, who they believe may have information about Denison’s whereabouts.
The man became implicated in the abduction investigation after he dropped another one of Denison’s friends at the same house where she had been staying. Many college-age women share the rental house near the University of Nevada.
Authorities say that the man picked up Denison’s friend around 1 a.m. Sunday at the Sands Regency Hotel Casino after she failed to find a taxi. The driver, considered for now a “person of interest” rather than a “suspect,” dropped the young woman at the house roughly three hours before Denison and another friend returned from the same party.
UPDATE VI: Denison Investigators Interview Registered Sex Offenders
Investigators have begun interviewing sex offenders who live in the neighborhood where Brianna Denison disappeared from. They say within a one-mile span of the home on Mackay Way, there are about 100 registered sex offenders…and police want to talk to all of them.
Officers checked every empty home, building and alley in the Mackay Way neighborhood, leaving no trash can unturned. With no sign of Brianna, they say their next step was taking a closer look at neighbors with past convictions of a sex crime.
Reno search focuses on sex offenders
Police question nearly 100 as they continue hunt for former Mendocino woman
The Regional Sex Offender Unit, which includes Reno and Sparks police as well as Washoe County sheriff’s deputies, was focusing on sex offenders who live within a mile of the Mackay Court residence where Denison was staying before she disappeared.
That was part of a larger effort to contact more than 1,700 sex offenders registered in Washoe County.
“We’re continuing to be out in the field and the sex offender unit is also working on this,” said Steve Frady, public information officer for the Reno police and fire departments.
Authorities expressed frustration with the search.
“From our perspective, we don’t have any credible leads in which to follow up at this point,” University of Nevada, Reno Police Chief Adam Garcia said Wednesday night.
“Basically, Brianna has disappeared. She has fallen off the face of the Earth,” he told a Reno radio station.
UPDATE VII: Possible Suspect Sketch Released In Missing Teen Case
(sketch of Reno, NV serial rapist)
Already linked to the December sexual assault of a woman in Reno, police said Thursday they now have DNA evidence that also ties the suspected abduction of Brianna Denison to an attack in the same neighborhood back in late November.
Police also released a composite sketch of a suspected rapist in a previously unreported attack in the area in October that investigators said is “not inconsistent” with the descriptions in the other three cases.
The developments stem from an “exponential increase” in information flowing into police tip lines since investigators released a description on Monday of a suspect in a December kidnapping and sexual assault also near campus of the University of Nevada, Reno, Reno Police Commander Ron Holladay said.
Police said DNA helped link that crime to evidence collected at the Reno home where the 19-year-old Denison last was seen in the early morning hours of Jan. 20.
On Thursday, Holladay said they now have connected all three attacks with DNA and were investigating the October rape of a woman who came forward on Wednesday to report she was attacked at gunpoint in a UNR parking garage within 100 yards of a campus police station.
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