Police to continue search in Susan Powell case into Saturday

ELY, Nevada — Law enforcement officials searched about a dozen abandoned mine shafts in the mountains outside of Ely, Nev., Friday for clues into the disappearance of missing West Valley mother Susan Cox Powell.

"It was a very long, exhausting day," said West Valley Police Sgt. Mike Powell. "And we had a very successful day."

No physical evidence was collected Friday. Instead, investigators came away with "documentation and photographs" of each mine shaft, Sgt. Powell said.

The search was expected to resume, and possibly wrap up, on Saturday.

Sgt. Powell plus four detectives from the West Valley Police Department, along with representatives from the White Pines County Sheriff's Office and the Bureau of Land Management out Ely, searched the rugged terrain about five miles outside of Ely until about 5 p.m. Friday.

Well over a dozen reporters and photographers initially accompanied the searchers. The first search took place just off of Highway 50 near a gravel pit below Squaw Peak. Searchers focused on mine shafts. White Pines County Sheriff Dan Watts estimated there are a couple hundred mine shafts in the area.

"We're going to check every one we can get to," Watts said.

Police released few details at a Friday morning news conference about why they were in Nevada, but the sergeant later explained that new information from a search warrant in the Susan Powell case prompted them to head to the Silver State.

"We were able to obtain information from a prior search warrant," Sgt. Mike Powell said. He would not specify when or where the warrant was served or whether the information was a result from crime lab tests. At one point, he said the warrant was served during "the initial part of the investigation" and said the information received was "fairly recent."

"The specifics I'm not able to discuss in any detail at all," Mike Powell said earlier at a news conference that prompted more questions than provided answers.

The sergeant attributed the scant information to a court-ordered "secrecy order" and invited members of the media to join him and four police detectives on several searches in areas outside of town. He said investigators chose to "utilize the media" in order to let people know the case is still an active investigation.

After Friday's search was over, Mike Powell noted that part for the reason for the delay in receiving some of the information from the search warrant that eventually led them to Ely, Nev., was Josh Powell.