Haleigh Cummings: Fourth Day Updates-Searchers Expand Search Area; Some Family Members Re-Interviewed

After four days and no sign of little 5-year-old Haleigh Cummings, the search became more intense Friday with more interviews, more volunteers and a wider, more expansive search for Haleigh.

Tim Miller, from Texas-based EquuSearch, was involved in the search for Caylee Anthony and is now leading the search for Haleigh.

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Investigators are re-interviewing family members, but wouldn't say which ones.

Putnam County's sheriff said Friday the search area has expanded past the initial five miles into thick, dense woods. EquuSearch and other volunteers started carefully walking, riding and driving through areas looking for the little girl.
Investigators say they found items of interest in their search Friday and that was confirmed by the sheriff's office late Friday afternoon. They won't say what they found or where they found it, but it may be important evidence and it turned up because of Friday's intense search.

Friday afternoon brought the end of another long day of searching for little Hayleigh Cummings. Many volunteers have driven themselves nearly to exhaustion.
The back-breaking work has now expanded beyond the five-mile radius around the little girl's Putnam County home, through the woods on foot and on horseback.

"This community has a lot of empathy and sympathy for the parents, and we just want to do whatever we can to help," searcher Wanda Cassady said.
The sheriff is also searching the shoreline of the St. Johns River and the local lakes and the chopper was in the air most of the day. The number of searchers has swelled into the hundreds now, thanks to the arrival of the Texas EquuSearch team, which organizes volunteers just as it did in Orlando when Caylee Anthony was missing.
"There's areas they've got mapped out and we're gonna concentrate on that. The area's law enforcement has. We're gonna cover every square inch," EquuSearch's Tim Miller said.

While deputies are still on the ground looking, a large crew of fresh volunteers frees up more detectives to work on the investigation, which has included additional interviews with family members.

Meanwhile, locals who know their way around the area are covering acres and acres by riding horses and ATVs.

"There's nobody that knows the trails like the people that made the trails," said an ATV searcher.

Dominick Pape, special agent in charge of the Jacksonville office of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said forensic evidence collected during the investigation such as DNA and fingerprints would be a priority.

About 20 agents are working around the clock at a command center parked near the double wide mobile home where the girl went missing.

"We have yet to make a recovery and we are working toward that," Pape said.
The new search area will include rivers, thick brush and swampy areas. The search will continue round the clock over the weekend.