Police frustrated in search for Utah teen

Elizabeth Smart in an undated family photo.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (CNN) -- Salt Lake City's police chief said Friday he was frustrated by the lack of progress in the search for a 14-year-old girl abducted at gunpoint from her home early Wednesday.

Three days of exhaustive searching failed to turn up signs of Elizabeth Smart. The FBI has joined the investigation, and a $250,000 reward has been offered for the girl's return.

Elizabeth was abducted at gunpoint from her suburban bedroom early Wednesday, police said. Police Chief Rick Dinse said investigators were checking computers in the house to see if the girl had any contact with strangers over the Internet, and that police would be questioning friends of the family.

"We have a list of people to interview that's probably longer than any list I've ever seen. And you betcha, we're going to get to everybody," Dinse told reporters.

Dinse also said the family has been "extremely cooperative" and "have done everything we have asked them to do."

"We are not focusing on the family at this time. But we have not eliminated anybody as a suspect," he said.

Her father, Ed Smart, was hospitalized for exhaustion Friday as the search broadened, authorities said.

"The stress of this whole thing is mounting, and the family is feeling it," Salt Lake City Police Capt. Scott Atkinson said.

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Elizabeth, a 5-foot-6, 105-pound blonde, was taken from her family's seven-bedroom home in the posh Federal Heights neighborhood about 1 a.m. Wednesday while her parents slept, Dinse said.

Elizabeth's 9-year-old sister, who slept in the same room, witnessed the abduction. But the gunman threatened her not to tell, so she waited to tell her parents until two hours later.

Police said the abductor is a 5-feet-8-inch white man wearing a white shirt and white baseball cap, armed with a black handgun.

The Smart home -- in a cul-de-sac with lake and mountain views -- is equipped with a security system, but it was usually turned off at night because movements by the children would trigger its motion sensors.

As police expanded their search Friday to encompass Salt Lake County, Elizabeth missed a milestone event.

Salt Lake's Bryant Intermediate School, where Elizabeth was an eighth-grader, held its annual "promotion ceremony" Friday, honoring the Class of 2002's advancement to high school. The school's principal called for a moment of silence for the girl at the ceremony, and her older brother accepted the promotion certificate on her behalf.

Neither of the child's parents was present for the ceremony. Elizabeth's father remained hospitalized, her mother, Lois, was resting at the family's home, Atkinson said.

Dinse said investigators had not uncovered enough evidence to determine whether the abduction was random or "targeted."

Her father, a real estate broker, said earlier that the family "can't even fathom who it is or why they took her."

$250,000 reward

Salt Lake City police have announced a $250,000 reward for Elizabeth's safe return. Law enforcement agencies throughout Utah and in adjacent areas of Wyoming and Idaho are on the lookout for Elizabeth and her abductor, and the FBI has joined the case.

While searching in the woods of Emigration Canyon a few miles east of Salt Lake City on Thursday evening, one volunteer said he saw a man who fit the description of Elizabeth's kidnapper trying to cover up his footprints: The volunteer, Chad Woodruff, said he saw the man crawling uphill on his hands and knees for about 45 minutes before losing sight of him.

About 10 minutes later, Woodruff said he and other members of his search party heard a couple of gunshots about 300 yards away. When searchers below Woodruff began to call to him, they apparently spooked the man and he ran away.

That man has not been found, Atkinson said.

In another lead, a milkman reported seeing a suspicious car in Smart's neighborhood on the Monday before the kidnapping. But investigators have been unable to locate the car or trace the plate, Atkinson said.