DC Police Announce New Searches For Missing Girl

WASHINGTON (WJZ)--Gone without a trace. 8-year old Relisha Rudd vanished nearly two years ago. Now, new information has sparked a renewed search for the missing D.C. girl.

WJZ's Meghan McCorkell has the latest.

For 21 months, the search has gone cold for 8-year old Relisha Rudd.

Now, police and the FBI have flooded a 15-acre construction site conducting a grid search for clues that could lead to the little girl.

"We really have done some extensive dives into the information we had and then some new information that came in as to different possibilities about the movement of Mr. Tatum," said Chief Cathy Lanier.

Kahlil Tatum-- the maintenance man at the homeless shelter where the child lived--is the last person to see her alive in March of 2014.

He's with Rudd on surveillance video inside a Holiday Inn.

The hotel is in the same block as the latest search scene.

"Oftentimes children are not taken very far especially in the case where the child may have been murdered of violently victimized," said Robert Lowery, Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The new search site is just minutes away from Kenilworth Park, where police found Kahlil Tatum's body after they say he committed suicide.

Before his death, Tatum bought a shovel and garbage bags and spent hours in that park. But, an exhaustive search there turned up no sign of Relisha.

The case has perplexed police from the beginning after the child's mother stalled for three weeks before reporting her missing.

"For searches of this nature now 21 months later, it gets more difficult every single day," said Chief Lanier.

But police say they won't stop looking until she's found.

Crews searching today say they haven't found anything significant to the investigation.

Relisha Rudd would have turned 10-years-old last month.