April 03--OCEAN SPRINGS -- She and her 2-year-old brother, Buddy, were in and out of the house Wednesday, playing in the front yard and going in for a cookie.
Ray Gutzeit, their father, just left the front door open for his two children. The weather was good. The yard is fenced. The gate was locked.
"Then it got quiet," Gutzeit said. "And when you have two kids and it gets quiet, something's wrong."
He went outside and found Buddy playing with a garden hose. But Elizabeth, 3, was gone.
It's the thing that stops a parent's heart.
When a child is missing, time stops and nothing else matters. Gutzeit was no exception.
"I went through the whole house, the front and backyard, the little bit of woods out back, these drain pipes," he said, pointing to the culverts under the driveway. Frantic, he was calling her name the whole time.
Five minutes went by. He had run out of places to look, and he knew time was of the essence.
"I didn't mess around. I called 911," he said. "I watch enough crime shows. I know the longer they're gone, the less chance you have of getting your child back."
Ocean Springs police were there in two minutes, he said.
An Amber Alert went out at 12:43 p.m., and the search was
on. It would be 2:14 before the ordeal was over and Elizabeth was back in his arms and hugging her mother.
But before they found her -- hiding behind a central air conditioning unit in the backyard -- their little street, Bills Avenue in downtown Ocean Springs, would be blocked off and lined with police cars and fire units. Neighbors' houses would be searched, their own house searched and searched again, relatives called in, a nearby school alerted and every white van in the general area stopped during an all-out, almost two-hour search for Elizabeth Gutzeit.
Two came immediately
The first two police officers who arrived "checked every inch of the house," Gutzeit said, "the attic, everything."
"I knew she couldn't get in the attic; I didn't care. They were just doing their job," he said. "They were really good."
As it escalated, neighbors got involved with the search and were great to let police search their homes, he said. The street was blocked off. Elizabeth's mother, Krystal Catchot of D'Iberville, had to park and walk in.
Catchot said she had been on her way to the house to give Gutzeit money for diapers and wipes when she heard.
"I don't know what to say," she said. "My heart was racing so hard and I was thinking, 'My baby, my baby.'"
She said was looking in yards the whole way as she walked.
A neighbor told police she remembered seeing an older white van that seemed out of place in the neighborhood.
"I was very upset when I heard about the van," Gutzeit said. "I could just see her in a van.
"I heard police were stopping every van between here and Highway 57."
The house was a beehive of activity. Police pulled Gutzeit aside and explained to him everything they were doing. They gave him an officer to be his point of contact, he said.
"So many people were looking," he said. "I just stayed outside the house.
"And we were walking around out front, when it came on the radio that the child had been located."
She was in the backyard the whole time, hidden in a narrow space between the air conditioning unit and the back wall of the house. Police told Gutzeit it looked like she may have played there before. The grass was worn down and leaves brushed aside from a patch of dirt where she had been sitting.
"I was in a panic, running around looking in drain pipes and places I thought where she could have gotten hurt," Gutzeit said, "not thinking she'd be crouched behind an air conditioner."
Wednesday afternoon, as Gutzeit relived it, he talked to Elizabeth, a spunky little blonde, who was tan from playing outside.
"You hid a long time," he said.
She nodded and said, "Me hide."
She wasn't scared. No remorse.
An all-out effort
Ocean Springs police, firefighters and Jackson County deputies were involved in the search.
Nearby Oak Park Elementary School was alerted, but not placed on lockdown. Ocean Springs Deputy Chief Mark Dunston said they did stop any white van they saw, to check inside for the missing child. "We had to follow up on every possible lead until the child was found," he. "I could not begin to tell you how many white vans we stopped, but several were and everybody was cooperative."
Gutzeit grateful and glad he made the call, quickly.
"Like they say," he said. "You don't think it will ever happen to you.
"Children," he said. "You can't turn your eyes off of them for a second."
Margaret Baker and John Fitzhugh, Sun Herald staffers, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2014 - The Sun Herald
