Tonight I had a very somber assignment, covering the vigil of 14-year-old Amber Dubois, an Escondido teen who's name was everywhere a little over a year ago when she first went missing February 13 2009, but after a short time the search for her went cold and thoughts in the media turned to the possibility that she was a run away. With the recent abduction and murder of 17-year-old Chelsea King of Poway, and the arrest of John Albert Gardner III, 30, in that case. New evidence and a new hope came to the Dubois family, who never gave up the search for their daughter. When a phone call came into police Thursday March 4th from the parents of three girls who said their daughters found a plastic bag with hair in it, about nine months earlier at Kit Carson park. So a new search began for Amber and this time they did find her, sadly not alive. After a search of a pond at Kit Carson park in Escondido didn't turn up a body investigators working a lead moved the search to a remote area of the Pala Indian Reservation, and on Saturday March 6th they found skeletal remains that were positively identified as the 14-year-old girl.
So tonight friends, family members, and those who never met Amber but just wanted to say one final goodbye, gathered at her high school, to do so. The attendance was in the thousands, and although many of those in attendance never met the young girl who didn't get a chance to live her life, they lit candles, sang songs, and cried tears for the girl who will be fourteen forever.
I found it very apt that as the mourners started to disperse and the candles started to be put out, a light rain began to fall. This was in no way how anyone wanted this to end. A 14-year-old's life being cut short by a monster of a human being, but at the very least it is the start of some small closure for the family.
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