Search For Missing 15-year-old Morgan Hill Girl

  15-year-old Sierra Lamar was last seen on Friday March 16 as she headed off to school from her Morgan Hill home. 

Sierra Lamar Sierra (pictured above and below)is 5 feet 2 inches tall with a thin build. She was last seen with her Juicy brand black and pink purse.

Law enforcement is treating her disappearance as a missing person’s case. ”There is no information leading us to believe she purposely ran away,” On the other hand, we don’t have information or evidence associating a crime with her being missing.” - Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Sgt. Jose Cardoza said.

The investigation: 
The Sheriff’s Office said its Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement team Task Force has been assisting with the investigation and is contacting all known persons convicted of prior sexual assault related crimes in the South County area as a precaution. The purpose of contacting the people with priors in the area is to confirm their whereabouts during the time Sierra went missing. This is done in all missing child cases.

 Her Father Steve Wayne Lamar, of Fremont, is a registered sex offender, but he has been cooperating with authorities and is not considered a person of interest in his daughter's disappearance, Sgt. Jose Cardoza of the Santa Clara County sheriff's office said.
Steve Lamar was convicted of lewd acts with a child younger than 14 years old.(l)

Sierra's father, said he had no reason to believe Sierra was planning to run away.
He talked to her the day before she was reported missing, and she was "happy, talking to me about homework. "She was asking me to make an appointment so she could dye her hair," Steve LaMar said. "She wouldn't miss that appointment — if you knew my daughter."

Investigators are also interviewing students at Sobrato High School, where Sierra currently attends, and at Washington High School in Fremont, where she attended before transferring last fall.

Marc Klaas, whose daughter Polly was kidnapped and murdered in 1994, is also on the case and has helped LaMar set up a search center.

Clues and Evidence:

• Police have found a bag and clothing belonging to Sierra LaMar, two days later, discarded near an intersection close to her home, her Juicy brand bag contained a neatly folded pair of pants and a T-shirt,  Santa Clara County Sheriff's Sgt. Jose Cardoza said that the evidence provided no clues about whether Sierra was abducted or ran away. Inside the bag, found at Santa Teresa Boulevard and Laguna Avenue in Morgan Hill, was Sierra's neatly folded T-shirt and a pair of pants.
•  The bag was about a mile north on Santa Teresa from where police found her Samsung Galaxy cellphone. 
•  Saturday police found a Cellphone belonging to Sierra LaMar, Authorities said the phone yielded no clues. Investigators found Sierra's cell phone on the side of a road in the opposite direction of her bus stop a day after her disappearance, the phone looked as if it had been tossed.
• The charger for the teen's cell phone was found in her room at home, 
• Sierra's mother  Marlene LaMar distributed a cell phone photo she said Sierra took the morning before she disappeared. It was a photo of herself, she appears to be a typical happy teenager possibly wearing the same T-shirt investigators discovered two days after she mysteriously vanished on March 16, investigators revealed Friday.  But because Sierra's tweet only captured a small portion of the shirt, investigators can't be sure it was the same shirt located inside Sierra's Juicy-brand bag found at 1 p.m. Sunday, according to Sgt. Jose Cardoza. "Whether it's the same we don't know, but it's similar," Cardoza said.
• The last tweet posted by Sierra, who used Twitter on a daily basis, was sent at 6:29 a.m. Friday morning.
• The last communication from Sierra was a text message sent to a friend at 7:11 a.m., or nine minutes before she was supposed to reach the bus stop at Dougherty and Palm avenues, according to the sheriff's office. That has been described as a typical text message between friends.
• Marlene LaMar said Sierra's bus driver told her she never boarded the bus the day she disappeared.
• Sierra moved to Morgan Hill this year after growing up in Fremont. She has friends at both Washington High School in Fremont and Sobrato High School in Morgan Hill.
• All of her friends state that Sierra is not the type to run away.

The Search: 
The FBI set up a roadblock where LaMar would usually board her bus and is stopping drivers who pass through, hoping someone will provide a clue that could help bring Sierra home.

More than sixty searchers resumed looking for the young Morgan Hill student in a 12 mile area around her home today Saturday. Sheriff's deputies and FBI agents worked well into the night Thursday and Friday, re-canvassing the area and doing consensual searches of Sierra's mom's house, according to Cardoza.

On Saturday, 60 search and rescue team members and four search dogs plan to scour a 12-mile radius around the bus stop she was supposed to be headed the morning she disappeared.

Map: Missing 15 year old Sierra Lamar

View Santa Clara: Missing 15 year old Sierra Lamar in a larger map

 Candlelight vigil for Sierra was held on Tuesday night at the Morgan Hill Presbyterian Church.
After a week of few leads and dashed hopes, missing teen Sierra LaMar's family, friends and classmates gathered at a candlelight vigil for the Morgan Hill, Calif., girl who has been missing for nine days.

"We want you to come back home. We know you will find your way back to us," Sierra's mother, Marlene LaMar, said

   Anyone with information about Sierra or her whereabouts is asked to contact Santa Clara County Communications at (408) 299-2311. During business hours, tipsters can call sheriff's investigators at (408) 808-4500 or the anonymous tip line at (408) 808-4431. They also set up an email address for tips at: tips@sheriff.sccgov.org.

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