GREELEY, Colo. — The Colorado Bureau of Investigation and Greeley Police Department teamed up for an open house to offer resources and answers to families of missing persons.
More than 1,200 people are missing in Colorado. Around half of those cases involve a person who has been missing for more than a year.
Each day that passes is another day further from the last time Fanday Seccoh saw his son Gibril.
“That was in April last year,” he told Denver7 on Wednesday. “One day God might make me to see him again. I'm really worried.”
Seccoh was one of dozens of families from across the state who showed up for the Missing Persons Open House hosted by the Greeley Police Department.
“These cases happen," said John Kinne, criminologist with the Greeley Police Department. "People should realize that they're not an oddity if their loved one goes missing. It happens regularly."
The Seccohs and other families stopped by to drop off their loved ones' medical and dental records to ensure law enforcement has the latest information in its missing persons database. Biological relatives had an opportunity to leave their DNA via cheek swab.
“Those will go through with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to create familial reference samples that can be entered into a database and cross-referenced in any past cases where there's the data is already in, or any future cases to cross-reference those as well,” Kinne explained.
CBI started hosting missing persons events in 2023. The agency said it hopes to collaborate with local police departments in different parts of the state more frequently, potentially once a quarter.
“We are really there just for support with the local law enforcement agency, kind of identifying what some of those gaps are that we want to just make sure are filled, helping them from a resource standpoint, maybe they don't have the personnel to take care of some of those things" said Audrey Simkins, an investigative analyst with CBI's Cold Case Unit. "And then just providing some extra support to those families as well."
Greeley PD said it currently has 11 open missing person cases dating back to 1997, with the most recent case opened in June.
