Search continues for missing Afghan child
Family marks girl’s fifth birthday still praying for her safe return
A day that should have been filled with cake and balloons was replaced with grief and tears as the family of Lina Khil commemorated her fifth birthday without her.
Lina’s loved ones are still searching for answers more than a year after she disappeared from her family’s Medical Center-area apartment. This is the second birthday of Lina’s that her family has endured alone.
At a birthday observance, local advocacy group Eagles Flight Advocacy and Outreach, which has been working closely with the Khil family, released a sketch of what Lina may look like today.
Houston-based forensic sketch artist Lois Gibson created the age-progression photo to help the public continue to search for Lina while accounting for changes in her appearance as she grows. Pamela Allen, CEO of Eagles Flight, said they hope the photo will get 10,000 shares on social media so that it will spread around the world and help bring Lina home.
“The harshest part about this is sitting next to her parents and seeing their pain on full display as they speak of their daughter,” Allen said.
Lina, an Afghan refugee, disappeared on Dec. 20, 2021, from the playground at her apartment complex formally known as the Villas Del Cabo. Lina’s mother was watching her children on the playground when Lina wandered out of sight behind an apartment building.
She never came back to the playground or emerged on the other side.
Police began extensive
“The harshest part about this is sitting next to her parents and seeing their pain on full display.” Pamela Allen, CEO of Eagles Flight
searches around the complex and throughout the Northwest Side, checking every apartment in the complex, using ATVS to search wooded terrain and even bringing in an FBI dive team to search drainage ditches. Despite their efforts, police were unable to locate the child.
Neither the San Antonio Police Department nor the FBI have closed Lina’s case. Police Chief William Mcmanus refers to the disappearance as a hybrid missing person and abduction case.
Her family had moved to San Antonio a few years ago, and she and her mother survived a suicide bombing while they were outside the Kabul airport traveling back to San Antonio after visiting Afghanistan to help a relative. Since Lina’s disappearance, her family has been harassed by people accusing the Khil family of being involved.
“She will be on our lips and in our hearts,” her father, Riaz Sardar Khil, said in December during the candlelight vigil marking the first anniversary of her disappearance. “No one can imagine that which we are going through. … We have to hold and be hopeful, but inside we are broken.”