Early Saturday morning before dawn, Elvia Swainson said, she left her house in the North Crossing neighborhood near the Village at Sandhill mall for a few hours to catch up on some backed-up work at her office. She is a workers compensation claims adjuster, and it’s difficult to do all the interviews and write up reports in an eight-hour day, she said.
Just before she left her house, about 3:45 a.m., she went to her daughter’s second-story bedroom and placed the girl’s iPhone in her hand, Swainson said.
“She was sleeping. I shook her and said, ‘Gabbiee, Gabbiee, wake up, I’m about to run out and do some work, and I’ll be back.’” The phone was so Gabrielle could call if she needed to.
“My speculation is maybe somebody saw me leave and came to the door right after I left and started ringing the doorbell or something. She may have come down with her cell phone in her hand and opened the door, thinking it was me,” Swainson said.
[...]
When she vanished, Gabrielle was apparently dressed only in pajamas and was clutching her iPhone. All her clothes, her purse and wallet with identification was still in the house. Police won’t comment on any locater signals they may have received from her GPS-equipped cell phone.
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has sent a consultant. By federal law, the Center can get certain information from various databases more quickly than local law enforcement, Lott said.
That group and the FBI “bring capabilities we don’t have,” Lott said.
[...]
Swainson left the house at 3:45 a.m. and was back between 7:15 and 7:30 a.m., she said.
When she entered the door, she heard her daughter’s alarm clock.
“I’m like, Gabbiee, Gabbiee, you hear that alarm going off?’”
When her daughter didn’t answer, she ran upstairs, didn’t see Gabrielle, panicked, then ran from room to room, yelling her name. She called her daughter’s phone and it rang and rang before going to voice mail. She ran outside, talked to neighbors and then called neighbors.
The clock, she calculated later, had been set to go off at 5:25 a.m. So whatever happened to Gabrielle happened between 3:45 a.m. and 5:25 a.m.
[...]
Lott declined Thursday to answer when asked if his detectives had a suspect.
But the sheriff did say that no family member is a suspect.
Gabrielle’s mother has hired a private investigator, Chandra Cleveland-Jennings, a 20-year veteran of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department. Cleveland-Jennings coordinates with the sheriff’s department, helps Swainson pursue leads and works with citizens groups. They’ve handed out more than 7,000 missing person leaflets in the northeast Richland County and Elgin areas.
Gabrielle’s father, Alvin Thompson, a long-distance truck driver, came down from his home in Virginia on Monday to do what he could.
“You never think this could happen to your family,” he said. “It always happens to somebody else.”
Swainson blinked back tears. “I try not to think negative at all. I need her to come home.”
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