Alabama teen missing for fourth day in Aruba
FBI, Aruba police, volunteers search for student
Friday, June 3, 2005 Posted: 9:10 AM EDT (1310 GMT)
Senior Natalee Holloway disappeared on the last night of a trip to Aruba.
ORANJESTAD, Aruba (AP) -- Natalee Holloway disappeared on the last night of a trip to Aruba to celebrate her graduation from high school. Four days later, the Alabama teenager is still missing, despite an extensive search of the Dutch Caribbean island.
"Honestly, at the beginning, we were hopeful the girl would come back," said police Superintendent Jan van der Straaten. "Today, we are more and more thinking about the possibility of a crime."
On the island remarkable for its absence of violent crime, hundreds of residents and tourists posted flyers to help the hunt.
FBI agents helped the Dutch military and Aruba police scour outlying scrubland with helicopters and all-terrain vehicles but found no trace of the 18-year-old.
Aruba radio and television stations broadcast a reward offer from Holloway's family, though they did not specify an amount. The family promised to reward anyone who brings her safely to a police station or hospital.
"Everybody has been quite supportive," the teenager's mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, told The Associated Press. "I am not leaving. I am going to have Natalee with me."
Holloway came to Aruba for a five-day excursion with 124 seniors and 40 chaperons from Mountain Brook High School, near Birmingham, Alabama. She was last seen around 2 a.m. Monday, Attorney General Caren Janssen said Thursday.
Police discount the possibility she left the island, because they found her passport in her hotel room, van der Straaten said.
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