It has been seventeen days since three-year-old Lina Khil was last seen at a park near her San Antonio home.
Following a lead, the FBI Dive and Evidence Response Teams spent Tuesday and Wednesday focused on searching a creek near Lina Khil’s home. The two-day search of the area has come to an end, with no evidence found to suggest Lina was ever there.
The team that searched the creek was made up of twelve individuals from Washington D.C. who arrived equipped with specialized tools to conduct their search.
On Tuesday, January 4, Chief McManus of the San Antonio Police Department spoke to press near the creek. Authorities have not disclosed how they obtained the information, but according to McManus, the police compare sources to find leads and act on any tip given to them. In this case, they were led to the creek.
McManus stated, “I wish I could be more uplifting. I know this looks like we’re really onto something but all we’re doing here is following up a lead. We don’t want to leave anything to chance.” The following day, search of the creek was called off. Nothing of value was found.
The Khil family is originally from Afghanistan and came to the United States in 2019 to seek asylum. There is a language barrier between the family and authorities working on the case.
Culturingua is a non-profit in San Antonio that welcomes refugees from Afghanistan. The organization celebrates families’ heritage, provides them resources, and guides them as they learn about their new community in San Antonio. Nader Mehdawi, COO of Culturinga, told ABC News, “A lot of the Afghan refugees coming here, they only speak Pashto or Dari.”
The authorities working on Lina’s case have enlisted the help of a translator to bridge the communication gap between the family and investigators.
Community organizations, the public, and the Afghan community in the area have all joined together to form search groups in the hopes of finding Lina, according to ABC News. However, community searches have yielded no evidence so far that Lina may have been in any of the areas covered.
San Antonio’s Islamic Center has put $100,000 towards the reward for finding Lina Khil, and the city’s branch of Crime Stoppers has contributed an additional $50,000 to that amount.
The San Antonio Police Department is currently considering her disappearance a missing persons case, but it could be re-classified as an abduction if evidence surfaces pointing investigators in that direction. The investigation remains ongoing.