Montgomery County police have obtained an arrest warrant for a Clarksburg woman being sought in connection with the disappearance of her two young children.
Catherine Hoggle, 27, was charged Wednesday with misdemeanor child neglect, a move authorities hoped would facilitate efforts to find her missing 2-year-old son, Jacob, and 3-year-old daughter, Sarah.
“This will help enhance our investigation a little further regarding some matters we are trying to deal with,” Assistant Police Chief Russell Hamill said at a news conference announcing the charges were pending.
The children were reported missing Monday night, when Ms. Hoggle’s common-law husband called police and said Ms. Hoggle had disappeared after being evasive about their whereabouts.
Police also said Wednesday that detectives had recovered surveillance footage of Ms. Hoggle, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, in the Germantown area at 4:40 a.m. Tuesday.
Chief Hamill said the footage was taken from a location on Route 118 between Interstate 270 and the Germantown Commons shopping center. He said Ms. Hoggle appears alone in the video.
Chief Hamill said that, despite the calls for public assistance, police have no reported sightings of the children since they went missing.
“That deeply concerns me,” he said.
Police said Jacob was last seen Sunday afternoon, when Ms. Hoggle was at her parents’ Gaithersburg home and borrowed her father’s car, saying she was taking the boy for pizza. She returned to the home after about three hours without the boy. Police said she told her parents she had dropped him at the home of one of the boy’s friends, but investigators later learned that was not true.
Chief Hamill said at the news conference Wednesday that Ms. Hoggle was seen Sunday afternoon driving in the area of a Harris Teeter store at the intersection of Darnestown Road and Seneca Road in Darnestown.
Police said Ms. Hoggle left her home with her daughter, Sarah, at about 5:50 a.m. Monday and told the children’s father, Troy Turner, she was taking the girl to a day care center. Ms. Hoggle returned at about 8:30 a.m. and said that she had dropped off both Sarah and Jacob at day care.
Mr. Turner, who works nights, did not know Jacob had not returned home from his grandparents’ home the night before. He drove Ms. Hoggle to a medical appointment later in the morning and after picking her up at 2 p.m. said he wanted to go get the children.
Police said Ms. Hoggle was evasive about the whereabouts of the children, and Mr. Turner decided to go to the police station in Germantown for help. He dropped Ms. Hoggle at a Chick-fil-A, but she left the restaurant out a rear exit. A police bloodhound tracked Ms. Hoggle as far as a nearby bus stop.
The next sighting of her was about nine hours later on the videotape.
Police said they were hopeful the children could still be found safe and they urged anyone with any information to contact them
“If you’re a friend of hers and you have any information whatsoever, it’s time to step forward with that information,” Chief Hamill said.
• Matthew Cella can be reached at mcella@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.