PEA RIDGE — “This just isn’t like her,” cried Tina Reeves about her missing 4-year-old daughter, Katherine Elizabeth Reeves. “When we’re playing hide-and-seek, she always comes out when we call her.”

For more than an hour, Tina searched - and called - for her daughter, to no avail.

Tina had been pushing little Katherine on a tire swing at the Schrader Road home of her friend, Shauna Drain, shortly after noon.

She told deputies she had to go inside the house to go to the bathroom and was gone for just a moment when she returned, the tire swing was empty and she could not find Katherine.

Reeves said she and Shauna looked all around for her daughter before calling 911.

Pea Ridge police officers and Benton County Sheriff’s deputies were on the scene soon after and searched the house, surrounding area and outbuildings. They began setting up a perimeter one mile around the house.

They searched for footprints around a nearby pond and questioned neighbors.

“She wouldn’t go far,” Tina insisted, saying the only place the child had been was to see the rabbits in a nearby barn.

As the search widened, deputies received a call just after 1:30 p.m. that a resident on Washburn Street in Pea Ridge had found a little girl matching Katherine’s description walking down the street. A deputy immediately took Tina to the residence where it was confirmed it was Katherine, who was returned to the command center set upon Schrader Road.

Katherine told questioning deputies she had walked to town.

The Reeves live on Wood Street in Pea Ridge. Katherine had been at Head Start earlier that morning, Tina said.

On the Record, Pages 3 on 10/20/2010