You're reading: Police upgrade missing American case to premeditated murder

Kyiv police say that on May 20 they upgraded the case of missing American Dr. Jay Sloop to deliberate murder in order to expend additional resources in his search, which has entered its 13th day.

Police
had earlier classified the criminal case as kidnapping.

Jay Sloop
of Washington State, 77, went missing on May 14 following a customary morning walk
he took in Kyiv’s Podil district and was last seen at 7: a.m. near the entrance
of Zamkova Hora Park, video feeds show.

He had
been in Kyiv since May 8 on a medical mission for the Seventh-Day Adventist
Church, for whom he works as a health care director at the church’s regional
headquarters in Spokane, Wash.

According
to his grandson, Jeff Sloop, on the day he went missing, he wore dark-blue
trousers, a striped, light-blue button-up shirt with clip-on suspender, and had
on a pair of tennis shoes.

Police
launched a nationwide search for the former obstetrician as soon as Jeff Sloop
filed a police report on May 15 when he arrived to help search for his
grandfather. Police told the Kyiv Post that migration and customs services have
also been notified.

And
according to his son’s blog, Ukraine’s KGB successor agency, the SBU, is also
involved, but the Kyiv Post hasn’t been able to confirm to what extent, if any,
the government’s national security body is involved.

Posters of missing American physician Dr. Jay Sloop have been hung up throughout Kyiv.

Quoting his
brother, Randy Sloop who is in Kyiv to help search for his father, Greg Sloop
blogged: “The U.S. Embassy has said (this disappearance) is extremely rare. It
seems very difficult to imagine that he could just get lost, slip and fall,
those kinds of things. I think it’s likely there’s some kind of criminal
element here. What the motivation would be would just be wild speculation.”

When the
Kyiv Post met with police search and rescue officers on May 20 in Zamkova Park,
they said they hadn’t ruled out criminal activity in Jay Sloop’s bizarre
disappearance.

Local and
American volunteers, including the police and three American search and rescue
personnel have thoroughly searched the Zamkova Hora Park wooded area.

Randy
Sloop said his father had no known medical conditions.

An
undisclosed award is being offered for information leading to Jay Sloop’s
discovery at 093-936-8305 or 093-986-9246. Ukrainian- and Russian-language
speakers can also call the police at 102.

Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be
reached at [email protected].