CLEVELAND (AP) – The FBI is ramping up efforts to identify a woman in Rhode Island surveillance photos who strongly resembles a girl missing from Cleveland for nearly eight years.
The FBI plans to put photos of the woman and a man spotted with her on billboards along the East Coast and the Midwest. The woman bears a strong resemblance to Ashley Summers, who went missing in July 2007 at age of 14, an FBI spokeswoman in Cleveland said Thursday.
The case is starting to draw attention from national media outlets, which could prove useful in expanding the search, said Special Agent Vicki Anderson. She acknowledged that it’s hardly certain the woman is Summers.
“We simply do not know,” Anderson said.
The woman and the man in the photo are suspected of being involved in a string of identification thefts in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The photos were released last October by Warwick, Rhode Island, police after the woman and a man believed to be in his early to mid-20s used a drive-up ATM machine to withdraw cash using a stolen card.