HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. – Hernando County deputies continue the search for missing 2-year-old Joshua “J.J.” Rowland last seen near Cheever and Yontz Road in northern Brooksville on Thursday morning.
JJ was reported missing around noon on Thursday and was last seen wearing a gray Batman shirt and dark gray pants.
Deputies say JJ has blonde, curly hair and hazel eyes. He’s 2 feet tall and weighs 35 pounds.
Authorities said on Thursday it was believed JJ left the home while his mother was asleep.
“Unfortunately, we have not had anything really to update you on other than the fact that at this moment, we probably have about 75 to 100 law enforcement professionals from Citrus County, from Sumter County from the US, Marshall Service. I can’t even name all the agencies and we’re doing a very very tight line search in the area, surrounding the house in the woods surrounding the house, probably a half, a mile or more in each direction, around the house itself, and we do have a lot of volunteers,” said Hernando County Sheriff Al Neinhuis at a press briefing Friday.
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Neinhuis said Friday that community members can download an app to help in the search for “JJ”. The app is ‘Map My Tracks‘.
“If you download that app and you do any searching on your own if you go to a park and look around because again, we don’t know what happened to JJ and God forbid, something bad happened to him, if somebody does happen to find some evidence or anything, they can do that ‘map my track’ and email it to the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office at findjj@hernandosheriff.org,” said Hernando County Sheriff Al Neinhuis.
The sheriff’s office posted on Facebook early Friday morning that anyone interested in volunteering for the search should report to the convenience store at the corner of Cobb Road and Fort Dade Avenue anytime after 8:15 a.m.
Volunteers are also being asked to hand out flyers with JJ’s photo to local businesses.
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