CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Corpus Christi Police Department Chief Michael Markle told 3NEWS on Wednesday that the search for missing 21-year-old Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi student Caleb Harris has extended past a physical ground search.
"There’s a lot going on on the other side – the technical side – as far as the digital search and those types of things," he told Mike Gillaspia during his monthly one-on-one chat. "So there’s a whole lot going on that we’re doing."
Harris was reported missing to police March 4 after last being seen early that morning with his dog at his apartment.
A CCPD news release issued Wednesday states that investigators currently haven't honed in on a motive for his disappearance, nor does it have any leads as to a possible suspect or a person of interest.
Police said the initial physical search for Harris included establishing a timeline of his movements leading up to his disappearance, doing interviews with his roommates, friends and family, and searching vacant apartments and areas near his apartment on Ennis Joslin Road.
He also said the case also has taken investigators to Harris' hometown of New Braunfels, and to San Antonio.
"One thing that hasn’t changed is that our energy applied to and resources applied to has not changed,” Markle said. "You may not look out your kitchen window and see all the grid searches and the physical – the canine searches that we’re doing – the helicopters and waterway searches, but . . . we have not slowed down one iota."
He said the department has officials from its Criminal Investigation Division and Organized Crime Unit, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals, and has gone as far as to reach out to the Texas Rangers for guidance.
"We even brought in the (Texas) Rangers for oversight: Have we missed anything? Is there a rock we haven’t overturned?" he said. "And, so far, they’re in step with us and they say we’ve done everything that we can possibly do . . . so we’re gonna move on and hopefully find some resolution."
He said the Harris search is complicated by the circumstances surrounding his "strange" disappearance.
"Some have a nexus to something that gives us a little more direction," he said. "You now, this is a little outside the norm."
But he's comforted by the fact that "we recover 96 to 100 percent of our missings every year – year over year."
"Outside the norm, the circumstances here, and we’re certainly putting in the effort to find Caleb," he said.