UPDATE: Ava Zeichel was found on Tuesday, Nov. 17. Read this story for more details.
EARLIER:
WASHINGTON — Rescue teams in Tennessee are continuing to search for a missing D.C. teenager who hasn’t been seen for almost a week.
Ava Zeichel, 16, was on a hike with classmates from the Freedom Mountain Academy, in Mountain City, Tennessee, when she became separated from her group on Nov. 11, according to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in St. Mountain City, Tennessee.
By air and on the ground, search teams have been out every day searching for the missing teen in what Johnson County Sheriff Mike Reece calls “rough conditions.”
The hikers were in the Shady Valley area of Johnson County , in the Iron Mountain Trial, Big Oak Flats, area. The area within the Cherokee National Forest is very rural and rugged , with some dangerous areas.
“You can be in different counties or different states within minutes,” Reece tells WCYB in Bristol, Virginia
Freedom Mountain Academy is a boarding school which claims on its website to combine academic study, farm work and wilderness adventure for students.
“It’s every parent’s worst nightmare,” Ava’s father Howard Zeichel told WCYB TV.
Her father said he is thankful that a lot of people have turned up to help in the search.
On Facebook, Ava’s mother Erin Zeichel said search teams are still searching the Cherokee National Forest for any leads.
“We have no new news but are still hopeful,” her mother wrote, after a day of searching on Monday.
Zeichel is 5-feet-3-inches tall and weighs 200 pounds. When she disappeared she was wearing brown hiking pants, a green fleece and an orange vest.
Anyone with information is asked to call 423-727-7761.
