Community may hold clue to find missing University of Iowa student, father says

The father of a missing Iowa college student says the search for his daughter may go in vain without tips from the general public.

Speaking in an interview with “Good Morning America,” Rob Tibbetts said he believes the public may hold the key to finding his daughter, Mollie Tibbetts, who disappeared on July 18 after going out for an evening jog.

“What we need is for people to tell their friends and neighbors that if they saw anything that seemed even remotely out of the ordinary to call the authorities and they will run that down,” Tibbetts said. “The authorities have told us again and again and again that all the similar cases like this are always solved by some tip.”

Mollie Tibbetts was reported missing after she failed to show up for work in Brooklyn, Iowa, a farming community of about 1,500 people where she was living over the summer with her longtime boyfriend.

Rob Tibbetts said the community near Brooklyn has made “extraordinary” efforts to spread the word about his daughter’s disappearance, but he believes there’s someone else with information that could help to locate her.

“The day after Mollie turned up missing, 400 people showed up, spontaneously, to form a spontaneous search effort,” Rob Tibbetts said. “I think it’s just because this community knows Mollie, they love Mollie and I think the rest of the country is starting understand who she is too.”

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Fighting to hold back tears, he said the public should forget about consoling him and his family and focus on bringing his daughter home safe.

“It doesn’t matter what we’re going through, we just need people to think -- because somebody knows something and they don’t even know it’s important,” Rob Tibbetts said. “We can get Mollie back we just have to have somebody call [the tip line].

“We all want her back and we’re going to have to rely on our law enforcement partners, but we can help them by driving those leads to them that are guiding this search effort and that’s all we can do,” he added.