New Field Searches for Mitrice Richardson Are Planned

• Missing Woman Has Not Been Seen Since
Sept. 17

BY ANNE SOBLE

Tragic stories about missing young women have dominated the news recently, but the family and friends of 24-year-old Mitrice Richardson remain hopeful that her saga will not end the same way.

A series of citywide field searches for the woman who has now been missing for six months are scheduled to take place on Sunday, March 28.

Richardson’s mother, Latice Sutton, and a circle of relatives and friends plan to send seven search teams in groups of five or more to Malibu, Calabasas, Santa Monica,Venice, Hollywood, Skid Row and the South Central area on the same day.

According to a family spokesperson, “We have been searching these areas, but never all at once. So this will be the biggest volunteer one-day search yet.”

The group says additional volunteers are welcome and needed. Those who want to participate can email: mitricefund@gmail.com for further information.

On the law enforcement front, the mother has written to the Los Angeles Police Department, the lead agency in the missing person investigation, and asked that the case be returned to Detective Kristin Merrill, the missing person/homicide detective who was first assigned to the case.

This request was made on Feb 15, but Sutton says she has not received a reply yet from the LAPD.

Richardson’s mother also noted that she has still not received the video of her daughter taken at the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station “that Capt. [Tom] Martin promised us in our meeting with [Sheriff Lee] Baca.” 

The group also reports being told about an encounter of a person from Monte Nido running near Las Virgenes Road last week with a sheriff’s deputy “who said that [the Lost Hills deputies] have been told the reason [Richardson] is missing is that her mother did not want to come and pick her up.” They add that “even now they do not get the straight story.”

The tight-knit circle of relatives and friends says that it shares the grief of the families who are coping with the violent deaths of their teenage daughters.

Family members want to try to get the dogs used on the two Southland cases involved in their search efforts.

They stress that they “are very upset with the lack of communication, interest and action by the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department” that first took the woman, now believed to have been mentally ill, into custody on two normally field citable misdemeanor charges and released her at 12:35 a.m. alone, on foot, without her purse or cell phone, despite recorded telephone assurances from sheriff’s deputies that her mother would be able to pick her up later in the morning.