Officials ask for help finding Virginia Tech student
Harrington was last seen at around 8:40 p.m. Saturday during the Metallica concert.
Published: October 21, 2009
Updated: October 28, 2009
Virginia State Police and University of Virginia authorities are creating a timeline tracking a Virginia Tech student who went missing at Saturday’s Metallica concert at the John Paul Jones Arena.
Authorities spent Tuesday following up on potential leads. They are asking concertgoers to review pictures or videos of the concert to look for anyone resembling 20-year-old Morgan Dana Harrington.
Police have been canvassing the area around the arena since Monday night to look for evidence. Harrington’s parents said they talk to her every day and her disappearance is very out of character.
“Morgan is a pretty transparent kid who’s had a really close relationship with us,” her father, Dan Harrington, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “I don’t think there are lots of secrets, so this kind of behavior … is not something I think we would expect.”
State police Lt. Joe Rader said investigators are treating the disappearance as a missing person case because there isn’t evidence of a crime.
Dan Harrington, who lives in Roanoke, said his daughter had asked him to help her study for a math test and go through the class schedule for next semester on Sunday. He called her friends around 12:30 p.m. after he didn’t hear from her.
Police said Morgan Harrington, a junior majoring in education, was wearing a black T-shirt with “Pantera” across the front in tan letters, a black mini skirt, black tights and black knee-high boots.
She has long blonde hair and blue eyes, is 5-foot-6 and weighs about 120 pounds. She was not carrying an identification card or cell phone.
Anyone with information about Harrington’s disappearance should call state police at 352-3435 or e-mail
. UVa police can be reached at 924-7166.
Reader Reactions
Don’t get me wrong, I hope Morgan Dana Harrington is found safe and sound.
Maybe this is not an appropriate time to bring this up, but it seems everytime there is a young white woman or white female child that goes missing, the news channels immediately bury the other important stories and make this one the top story and it becomes the only topic discussed on Nancy Grace and Larry King. It seems that our tabloid media seem to forget that males, old people and people of color go missing too, yet, our tabloid media never makes any mention of them, unless their young white women or white female children.
There’s a name for this, it’s call “MWWS” or “missing white woman syndrome”.
I agree with SoccerMom. This young woman had planned ahead of time to meet with her dad on Sunday to study for her math test and talk about course scheduling for next semester. According to other news sources, she had also purchased a Halloween costume.
These are not the actions of a woman who was planning on running away or leaving town.
My guess (and I sincerely hope I’m wrong about this) is that she met some unsavory character on-line and they planned to meet IRL at the concert—and he lured her out of the arena before the band took the stage. Hopefully the police are already scouring her on-line records and cell phone reports.
It would be nice if the press would give the right email address for the police. I just tried to email it (the bci-appomattox@vsp.virginia.edu address) to ask if they need search volunteers and it bounced.
There is alot of information there not releasing. Did she show up in her seat, if she had an assigned seat. Was she high or drinking. Did any of the event staff in the area of her seating see her, unless she had general admission on the floor.
When are police going to publicly acknowledge that it appears foul play may have been involved in Morgan’s disappearance? No girl would discard her purse and her cell phone - and her car - when she’s separated from friends and when she’s in a new place. And, according to her mom, she was SO excited about this concert she had the tickets posted on the fridge for the past 6 months. It doesn’t add up and I hope law enforcement continues to use all available resources to try to find her.
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