Attorney: Pundits on search for missing Iowa trucker have ‘demoralizing effect’

SAC CITY — The Sac County Attorney this week told the Sioux City Journal the ongoing torrent of criticism, much of it online, directed at investigators in the search for missing Wall Lake trucker David Schultz has had a "demoralizing effect" on those involved.

"They're not robots, they're not without feelings," Sac County Attorney Ben Smith said Thursday.

Schultz, a 53-year-old married father of 10-year-old twin boys, vanished before Thanksgiving. He was last heard from in the early morning hours of Nov. 21, according to the Lake View Police Department.

Social media users have since taken a standoffish tone with law enforcement, including the Sac County Sheriff's Office, on the case. In December, Sac County Sheriff Ken McClure lamented "a whole bunch of keyboard detectives and Perry Masons out here" second-guessing the work of officers.

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Smith said that, in his experience, few if any missing-persons cases or cold cases have been pursued as tirelessly as Schultz's disappearance.

"I know probably about six or seven officers and investigators that didn't have a Thanksgiving," he said. "They were working on this the whole time. I was one of them. The same for Christmas, a lot of time that normally would be spent with families, was spent expending extra hours in searching, trying to find David."

Last week, the Sac County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to use $25,000 of American Rescue Plan funds for a reward for information leading to Schultz. That dollar figure, Smith said, was an amount the county felt it could comfortably allocate out of its share of federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars.

Smith said that, from his reading of the law and U.S. Treasury Department regulations, the county is permitted to use its federal COVID-19 recovery funds in this manner. Municipalities have a fairly wide discretion in how they choose to use up to $10 million of these funds; Sac County received less than $1.9 million in total.

"I felt comfortable doing it," he said, adding: "If it turns out I'm wrong, if it turns out that Sac County's wrong, the money's been allocated. It has not been spent. And we'll re-evaluate that and make sure that we are following the law."

Smith cautioned that the reward is not yet active due to "legal and logistical complexities.“ He declined to offer any timeline for when the reward would be officially published. The Sac County Sheriff's Office, he said, has been "working diligently to set up a process capable of facilitizing the intake of this information."

Among the undecided matters, Smith said, are the wording of the reward announcement and the role, if any, of the third-party organization Crime Stoppers in accepting tips.

"It's just not a straightforward task," he said of the reward. "We have to be prepared to handle a large volume of incoming information."