A member of the foster family of the 2 1/2-year-old girl missing since June 10 spoke publicly for the first time on Friday, saying the family had searched for Everlyse Cabrera and cooperated with police.
In an interview with KTNV-TV, Channel 13 broadcast Saturday, a man identified as Manuel Carrascal said that once the foster family discovered the girl was missing they searched their house, the neighborhood and beyond before calling police.
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The foster family, which called police around noon, told authorities they discovered about 8 a.m. that Everlyse was missing from the home on Diamond Point Court, near Centennial Parkway and Clayton Street in North Las Vegas.
The foster family has been the object of protests by neighbors and others calling for them to join the search for Everlyse and to cooperate with the police investigation into the girl's disappearance.
Police have said the foster parents, Manuel and Vilma Carrascal, stopped cooperating with them early last week. They have not been charged with any crime.
The man told Channel 13 that after the girl was reported missing, North Las Vegas police came to his home and conducted a thorough search, looking inside every cupboard and even in luggage. "They were not looking for a girl who was alive but one who was dead," he said.
Police also interviewed family members separately for hours at a North Las Vegas police station, he told Channel 13, calling the experience emotionally, physically and mentally exhausting. "Sometimes words were put into our mouths to illicit a confession of guilt," he told Channel 13.
Attempts by the Review-Journal to speak with the foster family have been unsuccessful.
"All this process and series of events would unmistakenly show that we have fully cooperated with police," he told Channel 13. "If we were hiding something, like what many skeptics would like you to believe, it could have been easily uncovered by the highly trained, very experienced detectives."
The man also told Channel 13 that he feared for his family's safety because a person interviewed by TV news crews "expressed his intent to hurt us."
