Keep Bailing

While the search for the girl continues, the search for the individual behind the disappearance of Chelsea King, a seventeen-year-old, straight-A Poway high school student, may be over. The San Diego County Sheriff Deparment says a registered sex offender has been arrested in connection to the missing teen.

John Albert Gardner, 30, of Riverside County was arrested by the San Diego Sheriff Department Sunday afternoon. He is being held without bail at the San Diego Central Jail and is schedule for arraignment on Wednesday.

Chelsea King was last seen jogging in the Rancho Bernardo Community Park on Thursday. Investigators were able to tie Gardner to the crime through physical evidence they discovered during their search of the park.

About 130 law enforcement personnel, including San Diego Sheriff Deputies, Escondido Police, the San Diego Police Department and others, led by a San Diego sheriff search and rescue team, gathered to look for Chelsea King at the park’s lake, where she went for a run and where they found her BMW. The search was concentrated on Lake Hodges and several streams that feed into it, as well as some surrounding hills.

Investigators are also continuing to search for clues on Chelsea King’s cell phone that they found in her car, and on her home computer.

King’s parents, who also reported her missing, joined in the search, which lasted the entire weekend. They have publically pleaded for their daughter’s return, as well. “Anybody out there, if they know anything, please just help us bring her home,” her mother Kelly King said. “She’s such a good girl. She needs to come home.”