Week 12: Mitrice Richardson’s Family Turns to Member of Congress for Assistance

• LAPD Reports No Progress in Its Search for Missing 24-Year-Old Woman

BY ANNE SOBLE

According to this week’s update from the Los Angeles Police Department detectives in charge of the missing person investigation of the young woman arrested in Malibu on Sept. 16 who has not been seen or heard from for 12 weeks, “She is still missing and her whereabouts are still unknown.”
Detective Steven Eguchi told the Malibu Surfside News, the increasingly high profile case “is still actively being investigated where we follow up on every clue or sighting we receive.”
Among current actions by the LAPD are requests that both parents of Mitrice Richardson provide DNA sampling to the Department of Justice. Eguchi said, “This is standard operating procedure. It is not out of the ordinary” in cases involving missing progeny.
The LAPD still indicates it does not think the Richardson case specifics warrant bringing in the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist with the search.
Because the $10,000 reward posted by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will expire on Dec. 28, Eguchi said, “I just requested that the reward be renewed and continue until there is a final outcome on this case.”
He asked The News to “please keep this in print as much as possible, in hopes of generating information that could assist us in locating Mitrice Richardson.”
The LAPD’s Robbery and Homicide Division is the lead investigative agency on the case because the employed Cal State Fullerton honors graduate lived in Los Angeles with her 92-year-old great-grandmother.
Meanwhile, the missing woman’s family is focusing its attention on Richardson’s Congressional representative, Congressmember Maxine Waters, and asking that Waters help initiate federal involvement in the case.
Emails sent to Waters’ communications director are still pending, but office staff indicate that the representative has received requests for assistance with the case that began with Richardson’s arrest in Malibu and her pre-dawn release from the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station on foot, without money or a cell phone, 40 miles from her home.
The family continues to try to keep Richardson’s name before the public, telling the now familiar story of her booking on two misdemeanor charges by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and its questionable release procedures on cable TV shows and in magazines and newspapers.
Richardson is described on the LAPD blog as “African-American with brown hair and hazel eyes. The 24-year-old is five-feet-five to five-feet-six inches tall and weighs about 135 pounds. She was last seen wearing a dark shirt and blue jeans.”
Information related to the case can be communicated to the family website at www.findmitrice. info, Dr. Ronda Hampton at 951-660-8031, or LAPD Detectives Steven Eguchi or Chuck Knolls at 213-485-2531.