Law enforcement discuss how missing person cases are handled

WINSTON COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI ) – In the time that Jason Pugh has been sheriff, he has handled many missing person reports.

“You have old people that are starting to suffer from Alzheimer’s, that they wander off and go missing or drive off in their car and go missing. Then you have children that wander off for whatever reason. And then you have our hunters that that inevitably get turned around trying to come out of the woods at night or something like in and get lost,” said Pugh.

Each missing person case is handled on an individual basis, and typically not considered criminal until other factors are eliminated.

“You know you’re not immediately going to think that person was murdered or something along those lines. It’s when you start alleviating other things like when you don’t find them in a search of the area where they live. Don’t have what you need to say that they were leading a normal life right up until the minute they went missing, then that’s when you start thinking foul play may be involved,” said Pugh.

When someone is missing, time matters.

“In the past, typically, we’ve told people you know if they’ve been missing 48 hours, we’ll go ahead and treat them as a missing person, we’ve kind of got away from that at the sheriff’s department. We deal with it by situation, not by time frame; if it’s somebody that should have been home at five that always comes home at five that doesn’t deviate from the schedule, we start taking it more serious more quickly,” said Pugh.

Sheriff Pugh said it’s important to keep people up to date on where you are going.

“We’ve seen situations where people have wrecked their car at night. You know, vehicle wouldn’t find on to the next morning, you know, you, you, you run into that if people don’t know to expect you are not to expect you then, if something happens and you could potentially be laying somewhere hurt for quite some time, and nobody wants that,” said Pugh.

Winston County does have an active missing person case. Desiree Eaves went missing in November of last year. If you have any information that could help the investigation contact the Winston County Sheriffs’ office.