FBI joins search for Yale student

New Haven (WTNH) - Is it a case of a runaway bride, or something more sinister? The FBI have joined state and local police in a search for a Yale graduate student who vanished from the New Haven campus on Tuesday, September 8th.

News Channel 8's Erin Cox says FBI agents with a K-9 team entered 10 Amistad Street Thursday afternoon. Then, authorities began sifting through a garbage dumpster in the back of the building. Annie Le, 24, was last seen on a surveillance video entering that building and has not been heard from since. Yale Police were also there earlier in the day handing out flyers with Le's picture in a quest for more information.

The FBI also searched Le's apartment earlier in the day, but they did not answer any questions from News Channel 8 about the investigation.

"Law enforcement officers are continuing to undertake detailed searches of the surrounding area; and security officials are reviewing images from closed-circuit cameras in the area," Yale Chief of Police James Perrotti said in a statement.

Co-workers say she just vanished leaving behind all her belongings and her future husband, who she was to marry on Sunday.

"I found out when someone came into the office and asked if I had seen Annie, I said no," said co-worker Debbie Apuzzo. "She left her pocketbook, cell phone in the lab; she didn't go home last night. So, everybody is pretty worried [and] pretty scared."

Friends say she's very hard working, reliable, respectable and has many achievements and accomplishments in her field.

"A lot of good friends and a wonderful fiance [that] she is going to marry on Sunday. We all love her a lot," student Tara Bancroft said.

"Energetic, always smiling, they loved her in the lab, great future ahead of her, and we are praying that she is going to pop up somewhere and we are not going to look at the worst here," said Apuzzo.

The pharmacology student is from California and received her undergraduate degree at the University of Rochester.

Ironically, Le penned a crime and safety article for B Magazine, a Yale publication, in February.

Le is Asian with brown, shoulder length hair and brown eyes. She weighs 90 pounds and is 4'11". She was last seen wearing a knee-length brown skirt, a bright green short-sleeved t-shirt, brown shoes and a brown necklace entering her lab on Amistad Street.

Anyone with information on Le's whereabouts is asked to contact the Yale Police Department at (203) 432-4400.