The re-appearance of the case of a local girl missing since 2006 has the people of Pea Ridge talking, including two who knew 15-year-old April Andrews and the woman who called 911 back in 2006.
Deputies spent all of Monday and Tuesday draining a pond near Rogers to search for April’s remains. Investigators continued searching Wednesday, with their hands, shovels and equipment.
Longtime Pea Ridge resident Lucy Hale still remembers the day she called 911 in November 2006, around the same time April went missing. Hale said she and her grandchildren thought they heard something out of the ordinary that night.
“We thought we heard screaming from a truck, so I looked outside and it looked like a brownish truck,” Hale said. “And I went back in the house and called police.”
Hale lives down the road from the last place April was seen, at the corner of Weston Street and Slack Street. Police said she walked from her home at King Lane Apartments, just a few blocks away, to the Pea Ridge Church of the Nazarene, to pick up some clothes.
Janice Ramer still lives at the apartment complex and remembers the then-15-year-old April playing sometimes outside with her friends.
“I don’t know what to think about it. I’m sorry about it, and I don’t know how she came to disappear,” Ramer said.
Pea Ridge School District Supt. Rick Neil said he was April’s brother’s principal at the time of April’s disappearance. He remembers the family well.
“All of our teachers have a personal relationship with students, and that teacher relationship carries on for years,” Neil said.
Now Neil and members of the Pea Ridge community want some kind of closure.
“It’d be nice for her family,” Neil said.
“I pray that they do find her and do whatever it takes to find her,” Hale said.