HAWKINS COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) – The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) released a video updating the public on the latest in the search for missing five-year-old Summer Wells.
TBI Public Information Officer Leslie Earhart said the investigation into the Hawkins County child’s disappearance is ongoing.
“Unfortunately, there’s still more questions than answers,” Earhart said. “But we haven’t given up, and we won’t.”
Earhart said the TBI and the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office are working daily to find Summer.
“We’re still looking, still searching, still following tips,” Hawkins County Sheriff Ronnie Lawson said in the video. “One thing that we need to do is preserve the integrity of this case because we can’t tell everything we’re doing, we can’t tell everything we know, and a lot of the stuff that we get called on, we’ve already done several times.”
The TBI urges people interested in the case to only share information from official sources, as speculation and misinformation can hinder the case.
Investigators are still combing through hundreds of tips, but the TBI says tips that stem from social media are slowing efforts to find Summer.
“That causes confusion with all the tips that we get and we’re going through, a lot of it is coming off of social media,” Lawson said. “What we want to do is get more tips that we can rely on to find Summer, and that’s our whole goal – to find Summer.”
Summer Wells was reported missing from her home on Ben Hill Road on June 15. An Amber Alert was issued the next day. Since then, the search for Summer and the investigation into her disappearance have been ongoing.