KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A growing memorial of balloons and candles sits across the street from a wooded area where Kansas City, Kansas, police and FBI investigators discovered the body of missing 3-year-oldOlivia Ann Jansen.
Authorities found a body believed to be Olivia’s around 5:45 p.m. after receiving several tips.
KCK police had been looking for Olivia since mid-morning Friday when her father reported her missing, saying she had wandered away from home in the middle of night.
Olivia's was located in a wooded area near a walking trail off Steele Road and South 34th Street.
“That little girl should still be here — playing, living life with no cares in the world and she’s not,” family friend Mindy Cartwright said.
Cartwright, members of Olivia's family and other friends spent the day looking for Olivia, helping comb through wooded areas and neighborhood streets near the house in the 4400 block of Gibbs Road where she'd allegedly last been seen in hopes of finding the missing girl unharmed.
“I just wish we could have found her,” family friend Perry Goin said. “I was just praying in my brain that she just wandered off and that we were going to find her in the woods and she needed some water.”
Law enforcement on both side of the Missouri and Kansas state line issued an Amber Alert for Olivia on Friday morning, intensifying search efforts.
According to police, Olivia’s father said he woke up around 6:30 a.m. and realized Olivia was not home. He then discovered that the back door of the home was open and reported her missing to police around 8:30 a.m.
Neighbors told 41 Action News the house in question had been empty for several months. They said Olivia had been living with her dad and his girlfriend at a home near South 47th and Ottawa streets, where investigators also searched as the afternoon went on.
“We have had several stories throughout the day," KCK police spokesman Tom Tomasic said during a briefing to announce Olivia's body had been found. "None of them made that much sense. Unfortunately, to find her where she is, the way she is, I don’t think it’s too unexpected."
Earlier Friday in another briefing, investigators said Olivia's father was cooperating with law enforcement.
Now, family and friends hope justice will be served as police launch a criminal investigation.
“Hold your kids tight is all I can say,” Holli Denney said. “This world is getting worse and worse day by day, so I would just hold them tight.”
