Missing Air Force Officer Continues in Kyrgyzstan

DOD
WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2006 – U.S. Air Force special investigators and Kyrgyz authorities are continuing search efforts to locate an Air Force officer missing since Sept 5, officials said.
Maj. Jill Metzger, personnel chief at the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing, was last seen by a group of her coworkers at the Zum shopping center in the capital city of Bishkek.
“We will not rest until we find Major Metzger,” said Col. Joel “Scott” Reese, the wing’s commander. “She is an extremely valuable member of our warfighting team, and we are doing everything in our power to locate and return her to safety.”
Reese said Metzger is an exemplary officer. Her well-known attention to detail and passion for excellence make her absence strongly felt, he added.
A 22-member task force of U.S. special agents and their support crew are working closely with local authorities using every available means to find information concerning her whereabouts. The shopping center’s security tapes were helpful in directing investigators to which shops Metzger visited the night she disappeared. The city’s police force combed public transportation and hospitals and distributed flyers with her photo and physical description throughout the city.
Local media has joined the search by posting and publishing her picture, description and contact information for anyone who has a lead or tip.
“The local law enforcement agencies are giving us outstanding support in our time of need,” Reese said. “We are all committed to Major Metzger and her family and ask for continued thoughts and prayers from our world-wide Air Force family.”
(From a U.S. Central Command Air Forces Forward news release.)

And this from the US Embassy in Kyrgyzstan
MANAS AIR BASE, Kyrgyzstan – A U.S. Airman from the 376 Air Expeditionary Wing was declared missing at a Bishkek shopping center Sept. 5 at between 4:15 and 5:15 p.m. local.
The servicemember was separated from the group from Manas Air Base in the Zum shopping center and has not been located.
The 376th AEW base officials are working with the U.S. Embassy and local officials to locate the servicemember as soon as possible. Anyone with information about the U.S. servicemember’s whereabouts should contact the Embassy’s security investigator at 551-241 x 4516.
The servicemember’s identity will not be released at this time.
Please refer all media queries to the 376 AEW Public Affairs office. Call x720-418 for English, 785-139 for Russian

UPDATE on information
available

Published: September 7, 2006 Filed at 1:29 p.m. ET BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) —
A U.S. military spokeswoman said Thursday that nothing has been ruled out in the disappearance of an American servicewoman who vanished two days ago, even though the local police chief said she was not kidnapped.
Investigators continued their search for Air Force Maj. Jill Metzger, 33, who disappeared Tuesday after being separated from a group of servicemen while visiting a department store in Bishkek.

”I rule out the theory that the U.S. citizen may have been kidnapped,” Interior Minister Murat Sutalinov told reporters. He said that police had received no demand for ransom.

However, Capt. Anna Carpenter, a spokeswoman for the U.S. military base in Kyrgyzstan where Metzger is stationed, said ”nothing has been ruled out.”

Interior Ministry spokesman Nurdin Jangarayev told The Associated Press that Metzger and another U.S. servicewoman were recorded on a security camera on Tuesday afternoon as they entered the TsUM department store in central Bishkek.
She separated from her companion three minutes later, he said. In the next three hours, two calls were placed to her cell phone but neither was answered; records show that the phone was in the area of Bishkek’s bus station when one call was placed, but was in another neighborhood for a later call, Jangarayev said.

”This is worrying because it could mean that her phone was in someone else’s hands or that she was unconscious and could not reply,” he said.

The ministry, which oversees the police, is also trying to establish the holder of a phone she called about 45 minutes before she was last seen, he said. Police Chief Moldomusa Kongantiyev said Wednesday that Metzger had been expected to return to the United States by the weekend.
A statement from base officials said group of 22 U.S. military investigators and logistics officers along with Kyrgyz police are involved in the search for Metzger, who was stationed at an air base near Bishkek with the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing.
She was dressed in civilian clothes at the time of the disappearance, according to base officials. Carpenter said that ”there has been a lot of progress” in the investigation but could not discuss details.
The Pentagon on Thursday formally declared Metzger missing, a status officially known as ”duty status whereabouts unknown,” and disclosed that her normal duty station is Moody Air Force Base, Ga., as a member of the 347th Mission Support Squadron.
It said she was on temporary duty in Kyrgyzstan but offered no other details. Metzger’s father, John, said in a telephone interview from his home in Henderson, N.C., that the family was waiting and praying.

”We’ve got a prayer chain all the way across the nation, and it’s our hope that God will return her safely,” he said.

In 2003, Jill Metzger was stationed at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany when she won the women’s division of the U.S. Air Force Marathon, The Henderson Daily Dispatch reported at the time. She was a member of the Air Force-Europe team. Metzger had run in every Air Force marathon since its inception seven years earlier, the newspaper said, and had run marathons in Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin.
Base officials announced new travel restrictions Thursday, barring all off-duty personnel from leaving the base until Metzger is found.