Oct. 22 (UPI) — Police in Vermont are continuing to search for a missing college student who hasn’t been seen in five days.
On Sunday afternoon, Lia Smith, 21, a senior at Middlebury College, was reported missing to the Middlebury Police Department..
Smith, who is a California native, was last seen around 9 p.m. Friday in a building on campus, police said.
A drone is being used to “identify potential search area,” police said Monday.
Vermont State Police on Wednesday activated a Search and Rescue Team to be Thursday in full force.
Middlebury Fire Department, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, FBI and New York State Police are assisting in the search.
“We will do everything we can to find Lia,” three Middlebury administrators said Monday in a statement. “She is a beloved member of our Middlebury family and there is nothing more important than the health, safety, and well-being of our students and of our entire community.”
She is 5-foot-11, approximately 160 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes.
Smith, a double computer science and statistics major, competed on the college’s women’s swimming team and was a member of the chess club.
“If anybody knows anything, even if it’s a friend that’s just afraid that maybe the information they may have might not be useful, please share it with the police because anything is worth us looking into and trying to decipher whether it benefits the investigation,” police Sgt. Nathan Hayes said Monday.
“If there’s any concern, or if Lia thought she was in trouble for anything, she’s not. Nnobody’s in trouble for this. We just truly want to find out where she is and make sure she’s safe.”
Middlebury College, a private liberal arts college founded in 1800, has about 2,800 undergraduate students and about 700 graduate students in International Studies in Addison County in the state’s Champlain Valley.
Middlebury is among the schools considered as Little Ivies.