Sheriff in Kyron Horman Search Vows, 'We're Going to Bring You Home Buddy'

June 7, 2010— -- An investigator in Oregon vowed to bring home a missing second grader, choking up as he tried to send a message to 7-year-old Kyron Horman.

"Kyron, we're going to bring you home buddy," Multnomah County Sheriff's Capt. Jason Gates said today, struggling to hold back tears. "Nothing is more important to your family and friends."

Gates said authorities have received 1,200 tips, but are continuing to seek out anyone who was anywhere near Skyline Elementary School in Portland Friday morning.

The captain said he is relying on those tips.

"One of these is going to lead us to finding Kyron," he said.

There has been no trace of the 7-year-old boy who proudly showed off his project on frogs at a school science fair before vanishing Friday morning. He was last seen by his step-mother walking toward his classroom, 150 feet away. He never made it.

Gates said a source at the school saw him around 9 a.m. Friday, but declined to provide details. The school does not have video cameras. The FBI and the National Guard joined the search over the weekend.

"The kids are doing pretty well," Portland Public Schools spokesman Matt Shelby said today. "It's a pretty somber mood among the adults today."

Though there is understandable concern among parents that one of their own vanished in what is typically considered to be a safe environment, Shelby said parents and the students have been cooperative with authorities.

More than two-thirds of the school's population, about 300 children in grades K-8, showed up voluntarily Sunday to be interviewed by police.

Among their questions were about Kyron's likes and dislikes, his hobbies and his friends. His parents have so far declined to speak publicly about their son's disappearance.

Gates said today that parents and students who didn't come Sunday were being interviewed today. Investigators also stood in the street near the school today around the same time Kyron disappeared Friday, questioning drivers who may pass the school as part of their normal routes.

FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said today that there's not even enough evidence to classify the disappearance as an abduction.