Story courtesy of https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/searching-for-sebastian-rogers
Hendersonville, TN (FBI / WOKI) – On February 26, 2024, Katie Proudfoot went to wake up her 14-year-old son for school. To her surprise, he was nowhere to be found.
Sebastian Wayne Drake Rogers had spent the previous day with his mother. The pair shopped at a department store, played video games at a bowling alley, and had dinner at a local restaurant before heading home for the evening.
After returning to their home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, Katie and Sebastian prepared for bed, saying goodnight sometime between 9 and 10 p.m.
“Katie told us a little bit before 10 p.m. she heard a loud bang coming from Sebastian’s room, so she yelled out to ask him if he was OK, to which he responded that he was,” said Detective Brandon Carter from the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office. “She told him to go to bed because they had to be up early for school the next morning.”
Katie called her husband, who was out of town in southwest Tennessee for work, and the two of them spoke for nearly two hours before she went to sleep around midnight.
The next morning was the beginning of what would become a massive search effort for Sebastian.
“Katie called her husband and told him that she couldn’t find Sebastian—that he wasn’t in his room or anywhere in the house,” said Carter.
Katie got into her car and drove around the neighborhood and to Sebastian’s school, which was less than a mile away from their house, searching for Sebastian before returning home.
During this time, her husband called the local emergency communication center to report Sebastian as missing.
In the early days of the search, it seemed Sebastian vanished without a trace.
“Sebastian’s disappearance has deeply affected our community. … Staying united and supportive will bring us closer to the answers that we’re looking for.”
Detective Brandon Carter, Sumner County Sheriff’s Office
“This case was kind of a question mark,” said FBI Nashville Special Agent Robert Barrett. “Mom wakes up, and he is just gone. There’s a question mark, and we’ve got to figure out what happened.”
That question mark only grew bigger as the search went on.
“Sebastian did not take any clothes, shoes, money, food, or his cell phone,” said Carter. “His cell phone and cash were both lying on the dining room table where they had been the day before, when he went to bed. According to Katie, there was a small yellow flashlight that she thinks was missing, but that was the only thing that appeared to be gone from the house.”
The first week in the search for Sebastian was a massive community and interagency effort between the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Emergency Management Agency, Hendersonville Police, Gallatin Police, Tennessee Highway Patrol, the FBI, Metro Police, Wilson County Sheriff’s Office, Sumner County EMS, Sumner County Emergency Response Team, and several other agencies throughout Tennessee.
“The search consisted of about a four-and-a-half-mile radius around Sebastian’s home,” said Carter. “There were roughly 2,000 searchers equipped with an app tracking their movements. The searchers could also use the app to plot things on a map that they observed while they were out searching. The total area they covered within that four-and-a-half-mile radius was equivalent to a combined 44,000 acres.”
In addition to ground searchers, law enforcement employed every available resource at their disposal to locate Sebastian: fire departments, mounted patrols, ATVs, search and rescue canines, drones, helicopters, and even an airplane.
During day two of the search, the Sumner County Sheriff’s Department reached out to the FBI for assistance and specific resources that could potentially help find Sebastian, who has high-functioning autism.
Missing Person Poster: Sebastian Rogers
Link to Sebastian’s Missing Person Poster
“I contacted our FBI Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team for initial consults, and then they brought in the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit to assist,” said Barrett. “The BAU shared a statistic that about 50% of autistic children are prone to wander. They are also naturally drawn to bodies of water, and 71% of fatal outcomes involving missing autistic children were a result of drowning.
“That information helped us focus search efforts in and around bodies of water. The search team drained ponds and searched waterways and lakes looking for Sebastian.”
In addition, law enforcement searched almost every home in the neighborhood. Video recordings from nearby homes and a dashboard camera in Katie’s car showed that Katie and Sebastian didn’t leave the house after their return home from dinner and that no other cars were seen coming or going from Katie’s home during the evening and early morning hours of the night or day Sebastian disappeared.
“We have followed through on every tip that has come in,” said Josh Savley, special agent in charge for the Criminal Investigation Division at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. “Some of those tips, we continue to examine at a deeper level, but the vast majority we have cleared as either being irrelevant or ended with no results.”
The lack of answers in the search for Sebastian has pushed the community to widely share the story on online platforms—but law enforcement reminds the public to be wary of misinformation from unverified sources.
“Sebastian’s disappearance has deeply affected our community,” said Carter. “We understand the desire for the community to want answers and for us to explain every step of this investigation, but we can’t release all the case details without risking the integrity of the investigation. We ask that the community refocus on what matters most, and that’s finding Sebastian. Staying united and supportive will bring us closer to the answers that we’re looking for.”
Promptly sharing tips and information with the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, or the FBI is the best way to help find Sebastian.
If you have any information concerning the whereabouts of Sebastian Rogers, please contact the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office at 615-451-3838, or the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation at 1-800-TBI-FIND or TipsToTBI@tbi.tn.gov.
You may also contact your local FBI office, the nearest American embassy or consulate, or you can submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov.
“Continue to share Sebastian’s official missing persons flyer, and don’t wait,” said Sheriff Eric Craddock. “If you see something, say something immediately. If you call, right then, we can get someone on the hot trail.”
Sebastian was 5’5″ tall and around 110 to 115 pounds when he was last seen. He has brown hair and eyes that look hazel or brown. He would now be 16 years old. Sebastian has medical conditions, including autism, that may impair his ability to return safely without assistance.
The FBI is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to Sebastian’s whereabouts. The Sumner County Sheriff’s Office, TBI, and FBI are still working collaboratively, sharing tips and information, and urging the public to work with law enforcement in hopes of bringing Sebastian home.
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Case rumors vs. reality
Two rumors in the search for Sebastian have been disproven.
The flashlight theory
A house down the street from Sebastian’s had security video footage from the night of his disappearance—the camera, angled in a direction that happened to be facing Sebastian’s backyard, captured two small moving lights.
At first glance, the lights appeared to be right in Sebastian’s yard, suggesting someone was lurking with two flashlights in hand—a potential suspect given Sebastian’s disappearance that same night.
However, when law enforcement further investigated the video, they disproved this theory.
Still photo from security video that shows the light source in question
The dark sky and camera angle combined had distorted the security footage. When they examined the video in relation to the topography of the area, they found that the lights were actually coming from a pair of truck headlights flickering through the trees from a street atop a hill about 300 yards. Law enforcement further investigated to confirm that the flashlights were actually headlights.
They also created an overlay of the security footage in daylight with a topographic map—in the daylight, it would have been clear that the lights were coming from the hill.
The person in the green hoodie theory
A video surfaced of Sebastian and Katie in the parking lot of the local restaurant they visited the night Sebastian disappeared. In the video, a person in a green hoodie briefly interacts with Katie. Suspicions arose that, in this short interaction, the person in the green hoodie was planning something with Katie related to Sebastian’s disappearance.
Law enforcement spoke with the employees at the restaurant, who confirmed this person in the green hoodie was a frequent customer and helped identify them. Law enforcement went to meet this person, who happened to be wearing the same green hoodie in the video, and confirmed they were not a suspect.
