Amber Alert canceled, suspect in custody

The Amber Alert issued late Thursday night in Iowa was canceled Friday afternoon, a couple hours before the Johnson County sheriff announced the bad news about a missing 10-year-old girl. Sheriff Lonnie Pulkrabek said no identification had been made yet, but authorities who’d arrested the suspect had found something else in rural Johnson County. Pulkrabek says they located a body, possibly that of a young female, in a “rundown mobile home” at 4703 Orville Yoder Turnpike Rod Southwest in Kalona. “Currently identification is pending autopsy, the results of which may take some time,” the sheriff said at the news conference. The DCI brought in a mobile crime lab and was processing the mobile home for evidence. The sheriff asked reporters not to call any of the law-enforcement agencies to ask about the case, or to ask the family either. The child was discovered missing about 8-30 Thursday night but the Amber Alert didn’t go out till hours later. Iowa Department of Public Safety spokesman Jim Saunders explains it was just because of how the notification process worked. Saunders says Cedar Rapids police notified the Public Safety agency about 10:35 and were given a packet of forms they must fill out “to capture all the information for an Amber Alert.” They did, and the data was processed, then the National Weather Service began sending the alert through its links to newsrooms. No word on why highway signs did not display the alert, or why authorities wouldn’t talk with reporters all day to give information about the case. 37-year-old Roger Bentley, a registered sex offender who was a friend of the family of the missing girl. A younger brother told authorities 10-year-old Jetseta Gage was in Bentley’s pickup when he left. Johnson County authorities took Bently into custody about 7 Friday morning and the Amber Alert was canceled about 7 hours later.