Missing 9-year-old Melodee Buzzard may have traveled interstate with mom

Santa Barbara County investigators are searching for 9-year-old Melodee Buzzard of Lompoc after determining she was last seen with her mother, Ashlee Buzzard, on October 7 and may have been driven from California to Nebraska in a rented car before her mother returned alone on October 10. The search intensified after a school administrator reported Melodee missing on October 14 following a prolonged absence from the Lompoc Unified School District's independent study program.

Sheriff's detectives said surveillance stills obtained from a car rental agency show Melodee on October 7 wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and what appears to be a darker, straighter wig, which investigators believe may have been used to alter her appearance. Authorities say Ashlee Buzzard rented a white Chevrolet Malibu, license plate 9MNG101, and drove with the child as far as Nebraska, with the return trip passing through Kansas. When deputies conducted a welfare check at the family's Vandenberg Village home on October 14, the mother was there but Melodee was not, and investigators say Ashlee Buzzard has been uncooperative in providing information about her daughter's whereabouts.