Alcohol may be a factor in petite sophomore’s disappearance

Lauren Spierer, an Indiana University student who has been missing since early Friday, had spent the previous hours drinking and celebrating with friends. The pretty blond Fashion major had recently finished her sophomore year at IU. She has a heart condition that requires medication.

Spierer was last seen barefoot on a street corner at 4:30 a.m., having just left the apartment of a friend to walk home to her own apartment, which is nearby. Bloomington Police reported today in a press conference that both her cell phone and shoes were left at Kilroy's Sports, a bar near campus where Spierer and friends had been drinking until around 2:30 a.m.

Lauren likely took her shoes off at the bar because there is a fenced-in sand area there.

Earlier reports that a set of keys had been found a block from where Lauren was last seen sounded ominous, but Bloomington Police Department Lieutenant of Detectives Bill Parker said at a press conference this morning that he believes Lauren left the keys there earlier in the morning, after she and a friend left Kilroy's and visited both her own apartment complex and another nearby complex.

Surveillance cameras outside Spierer's apartment show that she never made it there.

Parker acknowledged that foul play could be possible, but authorities have no indicators of her current whereabouts or what might have happened. Parker said the police are focusing on 10 people of interest, but did not elaborate further.

Lauren's parents Robert and Charlene Spierer flew to Bloomington on Saturday from their home in Edgemont, New York, where Lauren grew up. She has been planning to return to New York later this summer for an internship at Anthropologie in Manhattan.

Robert Spierer addressed those at the press conference following the police statement.

We ask that if anyone saw Lauren, with anyone, please share that information. It doesn't matter how small it is, he said. Every little bit we get is important.

Among those joining the search for Spierer are the parents of IU student Jill Behrman, who was 19 when she went missing during a bike ride near Bloomington in 2000. Hunters found her skeletal remains three years later in a remote field about 15 miles from the city. John R. Meyers II was convicted of her murder and is currently serving a life sentence in prison. There do not appear to be any connections between the two disappearances.