The family of 3-year-old Lina Sardar Khil still holds on to hope even though it’s been...
www.expressnews.com
‘A piece of my heart’ — Hopes for a better life for Lina Sardar Khil dashed by her disappearance in San Antonio
The United States was a breath of freedom for Riaz Sardar Khil and his family when they fled Afghanistan more than two years ago.
As the Taliban seized control of their homeland last August, the Khil family settled in San Antonio, in an apartment complex on the Northwest Side where many fellow Afghans, mostly from their home province of Khost, also lived. There, they found a tight-knit community who share a cultural and religious identity while enjoying many benefits of life in the U.S.
Above all, they felt safe.
That newfound peace of mind was shattered on Dec. 20, 2021, when Khil’s 3-year-old daughter, Lina Sardar Khil, went
missing from a playground a few feet from the family’s front door at the Villas del Cabo apartments, 9400 Fredericksburg Road.
Lina’s disappearance filled her community with sadness and fear and elicited an outpouring of support from near and far. San Antonio police, the FBI, nonprofit groups and many volunteers have searched for the girl. The
FBI sent an elite team of divers to look in the shallow, murky waters of a creek not far from Lina’s home. Rewards totaling $150,000 have been offered for information that leads to her discovery.
Khil, 26, and his family continue to search, holding onto hope while coping with sorrow, pain and a gnawing fear that someone took the child with malicious intent.
“How can anyone cut a piece of my heart?” Khil asked.
Sitting in his apartment after another round of searching with volunteers, Khil spoke through an interpreter in Pashto, his native language, about Lina, the day she disappeared and her family’s life here and in Afghanistan.
“We came from a horrible place with the hope of a better life.”
Lina’s mother told police it was cold, so she put black jackets on Lina and her brother before they went outside, said Lawang Mangal, a family friend serving as an interpreter.
At one point, Lina brought a water bottle to her mother to open before she continued playing.
The playground is a small, square, fenced-in area next to a soccer court and an elevated pavilion with a wood canopy. Three side-by-side stainless-steel barbecue pits stand on an elevated concrete portion of the pavilion next to trees and a parking lot. Part of the black chain-link fence around the playground appears to have been forced down some time ago.
Lina was running up and down some stairs with other children when she went past the pavilion and into the parking lot near a large tree. The apartment building blocked her mother’s line of sight, Mangal said, but she expected Lina to emerge from the other side as she had many times before. When Lina did not reappear, her mother went to find her.
There was no sign of her.
Lina’s mother thought her daughter might have slipped past her and gone back to their apartment, but Lina was not there either.
Volunteers look through drainage areas behind businesses along Huebner Road on Sunday as they search for 3-year-old Lina Sardar Khil.
Initially, Khil thought perhaps someone from the Muslim community at Villas del Cabo had invited Lina into their home, a common occurrence. He and his wife hoped to hear from another family that Lina was with them.
“When nobody called and said, ‘I have Lina,’ then I thought that someone must have abducted or kidnapped her,” Khil said.
He called the police and reported her missing.
The police report states that two witnesses said they saw Lina near or around the park playing with other children. Another person provided security camera footage from a doorbell camera, but investigators could not find an image of Lina on it.
www.kxxv.com
www.kcentv.com
