Search for Canadian Coed Turning Desperate

Nadia Kajouji, 18, was last seen two weeks ago in an Ottawa university dorm.

ByABC News
March 21, 2008, 4:48 PM

March 22, 2008— -- The family of a Canadian college student fears she is the victim of foul play even though police say there is no indication she was targeted in a crime.

Nadia Kajouji, 18, was last seen March 9, a Sunday, by her roommates on the 24,000-student campus of Carleton University, whose grounds were scoured by university security and students, while Ottawa police combed the banks of local waterways, including the Rideau River, and searched for the young woman from the air.

In the two weeks since Kajouji disappeared, nearly 3 feet of snow have blanketed the Canadian capital, and late winter weather has not helped an increasingly desperate search for what now remains a missing person's case.

"So far, there's no information that would lead us to think there was any foul play," inspector Mike Sanford of the Ottawa Police Service told ABC News.

Authorities have seized items from her dorm, including her computer, looking for possible evidence in the case. Sanford would not confirm or deny a Canadian media report that an e-mail message sent late the night Kajouji disappeared indicated she planned to go ice skating.

"If that was on the computer, that would be one of the areas she could be going," Sanford said, adding that if she left the campus that night, "it's like trying to search for a needle in a haystack."

Sanford also could not say whether Kajouji's diary and cell phone were missing from her dorm room or whether she may have been taking sleeping medication, but Candita Mills, Kajouji's aunt and a family spokeswoman, confirmed those details to ABC News.

Her iPod had been paused midsong, and license and wallet, which carried more than $200 in cash, were left behind. Also tacked to a wall was a note written in Kajouji's handwriting that reads "Don't forget to love your life."

The night she disappeared, Kajouji was in some sort of dispute with a friend over her diary, which he had read without permission, Mills said. That friend has not been named a person of interest in the case.