Rally to Keep Hasanni Campbell Case Alive

SFGate.com- Even the most stalwart volunteers in the search for Hasanni Campbell fear they will never find any trace of the adorable 5-year-old with cerebral palsy who disappeared one year ago today.

"We pretty much know we are searching for a body, but we still need to find him," said Sherri-Lyn Miller, founder of Citizens for the Lost, a civilian search and rescue organization.

The group, which began looking for Hasanni the day he went missing, may have to face the probability that the young boy has perished, but its primary focus is to ensure Campbell's case remains alive and active.

The group has scheduled a rally outside the Alameda County district attorney's office today at 2 p.m. to renew public interest in the case. Miller and Gail Steele, an Alameda County supervisor, are scheduled to meet with the district attorney's office afterward, Miller said.

A lot has happened in the year since Hasanni disappeared - but unfortunately, little has changed with the investigation to find him.

Sadly, neither police nor volunteers are any closer to knowing what happened to the youngster on Aug. 10, 2009. An extensive search conducted by city, county and federal authorities who canvassed the community with canines yielded no sign of him.

His foster father, Louis Ross, maintains that the boy was last seen inside his car parked in the Rockridge neighborhood. Ross and his then-fiancee, Jennifer Campbell, the boy's aunt, issued tearful pleas for his return. Then police disclosed that Ross had sent Campbell expletive-laden text messages, threatening to abandon Hasanni on a BART train platform.

Ross and Campbell were arrested Aug. 27 but later released due to a lack of evidence.

The couple gave birth to their first child in November and moved to Arizona from the Bay Area last February, authorities said. Since then, the couple have split and Ross moved to Maryland to be closer to his own family members.

Miller and others, meanwhile, continue the search.

"I made a promise in the beginning that I wasn't going to stop until we found Hasanni," Miller said.

It has been a year to the day since Miller contacted the Oakland police and asked for a printout of the flyer posted to find the boy.

Miller, who owned a San Leandro print shop, produced 10,000 flyers and T-shirts, then drove to Oakland around 8 a.m. and started looking for the boy.

Since that day, Miller has organized civilian searches involving more than 100 volunteers and stepped on the toes of law enforcement officials on more than one occasion.

Oakland police initially discredited the group's efforts, saying they did not condone civilian searches.

At Fremont's Central Park last spring, a San Jose police search and rescue team was admonished both for volunteering their services and crossing jurisdictional boundaries without permission, she said.

A rally held six months after Hasanni disappeared also produced a weekend search conducted by police that was not publicized, Miller pointed out.

"If it weren't for us, this case would have died last year," Miller said. "We put police in a situation where they had to respond. Do you think the six-month vigil was a mistake?"

If there is another reason that Miller decided to launch an organization around the disappearance of Hasanni, it was because of the outpouring of support for Sandra Cantu, an 8-year-old Tracy girl reported missing on March 27, 2009. Her body was found less than two weeks later in an irrigation ditch. Melissa Huckaby, a 28-year-old Sunday schoolteacher, was convicted of her murder.

"I'd just finished a print job for them and saw all the support the Cantu family had received," Miller said. "I just couldn't understand why Hasanni's case hadn't received the same support."

Officially, the Hasanni Campbell case is still open, but there are no new leads or evidence to chase down, authorities said.

"It's not a good thing to say, but the case of Hasanni Campbell has gone cold," said Officer Holly Joshi, a spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department.

"We're going to keep the case open because it's a priority for us," Joshi added.

"There has to be someone out there who has some information, no matter how small, and it could be the piece that breaks it open for us."