Amanda page put on pause

NORWALK — A Facebook page dedicated to finding Amanda Dean shut down overnight after the director of Cleveland Missing scolded people there for being too harsh and judgmental about how the Huron County sheriff and BCI have handled the case. "This Group is temporarily paused for seven days," states a message at "Help Find Amanda Dean!" The pause began Thursday. The page will resume on Feb. 24. "The BCI is a professional law enforcement agency. They are not on TV doing policing like TV," Sylvia Colon, the director of Cleveland Missing posted early Thursday morning, responding to another commenter. "Search warrants are tricky. There have to be some things to get a warrant. The focus MUST be on Amanda." BCI agreed to help find Amanda in December, but there's little known about what, if anything, has been done since then. The agency has not interviewed anyone associated with the case, and has missed appointments with family members. Hello Colon also praised a paid Zoom call Cleveland Missing organized that took place on Wednesday. "It was great job," she said, referring to the phone call hosted by Newburgh Heights police Chief John Majoy, board president of Cleveland Missing. Joshua Dean, Amanda's oldest son, Thursday afternoon offered an explanation for why the Facebook page was closed. Amanda Dean Provided "Due to recent conflicts ... we will be pausing this group for a week and let everything cool off," Joshua posted. "I can't begin to thank everyone who has been involved in helping find my mom." Colon exchanged emails with Tracy Thom, a volunteer advocate, earlier this week. "My humble opinion is that getting Amanda back for this family is the focus. Any wrongdoing on the Huron County sheriff's department will shakeout once Amanda is home," Colon wrote to Thom. Colon made numerous posts at the page starting Thursday morning, disagreeing with what others had posted. In one post she "shamed" Thom. In another one, she seemed angered after a poster at the page suggested the family contact Ed Gallek, an investigative reporter at Fox 8 News in Cleveland. Truce seeking Colon did not respond to questions Friday. Majoy did respond and both attacked Thom and called for a truce. He said Thom has a different approach than Cleveland Missing but he and Colon both still are fully confident in BCI. "BCI has had the case for a mere 60 days. Taking away the holidays and weekends, it is not a lot of time," Majoy said. "To cast a negative light onto BCI after this short period is not something we agree with. If this were six or eight months down road, that would be a different story. However, such is not the case and to assume BCI does not care or has brushed off the investigation is unfair, unwarranted, and only further pushes a narrative our organization does not wish to follow." Thom said on Thursday she was tracking down a person who contacted the BCI five times at its tip line without getting a return call and made contact with the agent's supervisor to make sure he called the man back. "I didn't spend my time on the Facebook page," Thom said. "My focus was on the family." She said "six weeks is ample time for the BCI to interview the family, to return phone calls to them and to keep appointments." Majoy also said Cleveland Missing had nothing to do with the decision to pause the Facebook page, but he did not directly respond to questions about the appropriateness of Colon's comments there on Thursday. Cleveland Missing, also known as the Cleveland Center for Missing Children and Adults, was co-founded by Gina DeJesus and her cousin, Colon. It is the only organization offering direct support for families and friends searching for their missing loved ones. Gina DeJesus was 14 when she disappeared while walking home from school. She was imprisoned with two other young women, Michelle Knight and Amanda Berry, by former school bus driver Ariel Castro, the estranged father of one of DeJesus' friends. After a nearly 10-year period of captivity, which included alleged beatings and starvation, DeJesus and her fellow captors were rescued by neighbors in 2013. One of the people posting at the page before Thursday — "Bossman" — was surprised that Colon "out of nowhere" just started attacking people "with her words" at the page. The state announced late last year that it would launch an investigation to find Amanda D. Dean, whose been missing for more than 5½ years. But since then there has been little to no contact with the family and an agent assigned to the investigation never interviewed family members or collected the evidence they have. Huron County Sheriff Todd Corbin closed a missing persons case in about 24 hours after the family reported Amanda missing on July 11, 2017, and he's refused since then to search for Amanda. He said she was located safe under the care of a safe house, but she's never been seen or heard from since. The sheriff's office, in 2017 did not follow its own protocols for what to do when a person is reported missing, such as talking with family members, talking with the last people who saw the missing person and talking with anyone suspected of threatening to harm them. BCI also appears to have been ignoring standard response procedures since agreeing to search for Amanda. Coming Tuesday: BCI tip line goes unanswered.