Corpus Christi Police gave a highly detailed breakdown of the Caleb Harris disappearance on Thursday, nearly 3.5 weeks after the 21-year-old vanished.
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Corpus Christi Police gave a highly detailed breakdown of the Caleb Harris disappearance on Thursday, nearly 3.5 weeks after the 21-year-old Texas A&M University Corpus Christi student vanished.
Corpus Christi Assistant Police Chief Todd Green, who is overseeing search efforts, spoke with 3NEWS reporter Bill Churchwell Thursday.
He says they have interviewed Harris’ roommates, friends and family and have pored over hours of surveillance camera footage. He says the investigation now moves from the very visible search to detective work behind the scenes.
“I want the community to know we are still very actively involved in the investigation,” Green said. “It may not be as visible as it was the first week where you see officers out combing through fields and riding motorcycles and bikes and whatnot. Most of the investigation now is going on behind the scenes. It has to do with looking into digital data, forensic computer examinations and things like that.”
Here is the timeline they provided to the media on Thursday:
March 3
Evening hours: Caleb Harris played video games at his off-campus apartment at The Cottages on Ennis Joslin Road near S. Padre Island Dr. with his two roommates and a mutual friend. They played for more than an hour with another former classmate who currently lives in Colorado.
March 4
12:56 a.m.: A Ring doorbell camera at a nearby apartment shows Harris, his friend, and one of Harris’ roommates in the apartment complex parking lot playing with a puppy that belongs to the girlfriend of one of Harris’ roommates. According to Corpus Christi Police, “nothing appeared out of the ordinary.” Harris and the two other young men then returned to the apartment.
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2:20 a.m.: The second of Harris’ two roommates told Harris that he was heading to bed. Harris told the roommate he was going to “order snacks via UberEats for his school lunch” on Monday.
2:44 a.m.: Harris sent a Snapchat video to his younger sister. The video showed Harris “walking the puppy through what appears to be the apartment complex parking lot.”
3:03 a.m.: Harris sent a Snapchat photo to a high school friend who lives in San Antonio. That photo showed “a small bridge over a drainage ditch on the 1900 block of Ennis Joslin, within a few hundred feet of the entrance to his apartment complex.”
3:12 a.m.: Harris’ cell phone last shared its location data with the nearest cell phone tower.
3:20 a.m.: The UberEats driver delivered Harris’ order to his apartment. The order was left outside the front door as Harris had requested.
March 4 – Hours later
11 a.m.: One of Caleb Harris’ roommates found the UberEats order outside the front door and saw Harris’ pickup truck parked in front of the apartment. Harris’ wallet and keys were in the apartment but his cell phone was missing. The roommates called police to report Harris missing.
CCPD rules out suspects as Harris family remains confident in investigation
3NEWS spoke to Caleb Harris’ father, Randy Harris, by phone Thursday. He said he is “100 percent confident” in CCPD and what the department is doing to find his son. He said he is worried though about allegations, speculation and misinformation spreading on social media. Assistant Chief Green addressed some of that.
“Unfortunately we can’t tell the public everything we know in this investigation, it doesn’t work that way,” Green said. “We’re not able to be completely transparent and share everything we know, but we can very confidently say we have ruled out the roommates as having anything to do with this disappearance. Hs friends that he was communicating with that night over social media, we’ve ruled them out. We’ve ruled out the Uber driver that made the delivery.
“We have investigated very thoroughly all of those individuals, we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t look at that possibility that they could have been involved, but we’ve done that, and we’ve put a lot of work into initially and we’ve crossed them off the list. so, our next step is to continue forward and see what exactly happened to Caleb.”
A $25,000 reward remains available through Sunday, March 31. Next Thursday, April 4 will mark one month since Harris’ disappearance.
Here are the stories we covered so far in the search for Caleb: