San Bernardino Police are not happy at all about spending tens of thousands of dollars searching for a college student who, as it turned out, was never missing.
Sahray Barber, a 22-year-old graphic design student at the Art Institute of California, disappeared under mysterious circumstances on March 9 from her apartment near Cal State San Bernardino – then turned up 10 days later, completely healthy in some sort of shelter in Los Angeles.
Cops began searching for her after roommates reported her missing and someone found her laptop and cell phone in some bushes. Many assumed that Barner’s disappearance was related to two recent assaults on Cal State students.
In a YouTube video (below), San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan says that when Barber reappeared, she told the cops that she left her apartment in San Bernardino on her own free will because of “some things that were going on with her life.”
According to Burgan, Barber than made her way to a Los Angeles hospital. “It was at the hospital she failed to give her correct name, and therefore that eliminated the possibility that she was going to be tracked down that way,” Burguan said. “In addition, she saw herself on the news while she was in the hospital and knew that people were looking for her, and she still failed to come forward.”
At some point, Barber went to a shelter and there, employees figured out her real identity and contacted her family.
[adsanity id=12224 align=alignright /]”I think the public deserves an explanation to understand why we did what we did,” Burgan says. He explains authorities were happy that Barber is safe and with her family now, but since the search cost a ton of money, some things need to be explained,
Dollar amounts of the investigation are not known, but the first part of the investigation cost $24,000. That number does not include on-duty time, the use of helicopters, special investigative techniques and overtime pay in the second part of the investigation.
Burguan said he and the department will be seeking charges for the false statements – but no names were given, “We will submit a case to the district attorney’s office, probably within the next week or two.”
https://youtu.be/Xwm-lLjUMyo
