CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — For several months, people have anxiously waited for updates from Corpus Christi Police in connection to the Caleb Harris investigation. The remains of the 21-year-old were found in July after a Corpus Christi city employee discovered them at the Perry Place Wastewater Lift Station near Ennis Joslin Road.
Since the gut-wrenching news, there hasn't been a lot of information presented to the community about what investigators know. KRIS 6 News reporter, Alexis Scott, spoke with CCPD Assistant Chief Todd Green to discuss what detectives have learned since the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi student vanished in March and what could come next in their search for answers.
"Not much has changed since we got the autopsy results back," Chief Green told Scott.
Green began his conversation with Scott by saying CCPD detectives meet with the Harris family to give updates on the case nearly every week.
Due to the stage of decomposition with the remains, the Nueces County Medical Examiner's Officer sent them to forensic analysts at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification(UNTCHI). Following their conclusion that the remains were in fact Harris', they returned to Corpus Christi where the Nueces County Medical Examiner ruled the cause of the death as "undetermined."
Since the tragic day in March, many people have wondered if any arrests have been made. However, Green said CCPD has not considered the case a homicide, with one particular factor that stands out.
"In order to have an arrest, you have to have a crime and we can't even prove that a crime was committed," Green said. "We have no crime scene, we have no weapons. The autopsy came back without any major traumatic injury and that is why no one has been arrested because there's no proof that anyone was involved."
Recently, the Harris family offered a $10,000 reward to anyone with information that can help with an arrest in the case.
"We did identify a couple of people that we thought could have been involved," Green said. "We went through phone records, cell phone dumps, and geofences, we were able to identify the people that were in that area that night and surveillance video and we ruled them out as being involved."
Conversations on social media have also been a hot topic within the case. Through several Facebook groups, misinformation was spread regarding theories and ideas of what happened to Harris the night he disappeared. Green encourages people to only discuss details that were provided directly from law enforcement rather than word of mouth from the community.
But the question remains: How exactly did Harris' body end up in the wastewater lift station?
"The evidence that we have gathered shows to us that the body entered the lift station through the sewage system, through the pipes. How the body got into those pipes…well we are back to where we were in the beginning," Green said.
Green also added that the department will continue looking at tips and calls with Crime Stoppers to get as much information as possible into what happened with Harris.
He expects detectives to meet with the Harris family again next week.
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