the officers approached and this individual pulled out a gun and shot himself. there was no conversation. police say smith s car matched the description of the one used in the search for, used when authorities were searching for alisa. her brother told them it was a black vehicle and that car fit the description. jeff rossen joins us live from louisiana, missouri. and, jeff, what kels you tell us as far as authorities, how they ended up wanting to talk to this guy in the first place. well, they got some tips. they won t go into great specifics, but they did get some tips that this man, they were talking anyway at a local sex offender just to see what was going on, to see if anybody was involved and they got a very good tip that this particular convicted sex offender paul s. smith was convicted in 1995 of sodomizing a 10-year-old boy. so, there is a history here of sexual abuse. they found out that he was, may
girl. so they feel a little gypped, but what s most important is that alyssa mayer is doing well, she s expected home today or tomorrow. there will be a great homecoming here in louisiana and missouri. once again, police are saying the way they found this man, paul s. smith is through good old-fashioned police work. they say in fact walmart played a role in this. not only had he cut alisa it s hair and he changed her clothes. so they traced back to a walmart store in troy, missouri. there he was, there was their suspect. that s how and they found him. there was a caught on tape element here as well. we re showing at the bottom of the screen that were uttered i guess she saw a picture of this suspect on tv,
question mr. smith. they approached him while he was spray painting his car and that s when he pulled out a gun and shot himself. he died overnight. sum it up in two words, it s over. the person that you previously reported as a person of interest, paul smith, is the suspect. there s no reason at this point to believe anybody else was involved. nbc s jeff rossen joins us now over the phone. jeff what s been the reaction from alyssa s family? reporter: the reaction from the family has been, it s mixed, as you can imagine. of course as they told me just a couple of minutes ago, they re happy that this man is off the streets and won t be able to hurt anybody, hurt any other children, assuming he did do this as police say he did. then again, now that he s dead that he shot himself and killed himself that they won t have the chance to face him in court and question him and say why would you do this to our daughter, why would you do this to our baby
a boat ride probably seemed like a good idea. what we know of what happened is that the engine soon after they went into the water, as you know, these vehicles go on land and then into the water. the engine caught flame and the boat stalled in the middle of the water. it was drifting there for about ten minutes and the way the passengers described it in accounts in a local papers today was that it was a collision in slow mission. they actually had about 45 seconds to react and parents of some children on board said it was enough time to get life vests on their kids. tamron? stephanie gosk live for us in philadelphia. we ll continue to follow this. they still believe a search and rescue at this moment. thank you very much, stephanie. in just a few minutes officials will update the case of that 4-year-old girl kidnapped in missouri. just hours ago the man police wanted to question died at the hospital. police say they tracked convicted sex offend oer paul smith to a farm late yesterd