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Missing Vermont Student Found Dead

The body of a University of Vermont student was found along a rural road Friday, and police said they were questioning a man who lent her his cell phone on the night she vanished nearly a week ago.

Michelle Gardner-Quinn's body was discovered east of downtown near a popular swimming spot in the town of Richmond, Burlington Police Chief Thomas Tremblay said.

The 21-year-old senior had become separated from her friends when she borrowed Brian Rooney's phone to call them as she walked up heavily traveled Main Street, which runs between downtown and the campus.

Rooney, 36, of Richmond, has been the focus of the investigation since he was recorded on a jewelry store surveillance camera with her at about 2:30 a.m., Tremblay said.

Rooney has not been charged in connection with Gardner-Quinn's case, Tremblay said. He was arrested to face charges of sexual assault and lewd and lascivious conduct with a child in Caledonia County, about 80 miles east of Burlington, Tremblay said.

The police chief described the investigation as a kidnapping probe and he repeated authorities' plea for help. He said an autopsy was scheduled.

Gardner-Quinn was reported missing Saturday after she failed to show up for a planned meeting with her parents, who had been in town for parents' weekend.

Tommy Lang, 21, a University of Vermont senior who grew up with Gardner-Quinn in Virginia, said Friday that nothing seemed amiss when she called him from the man's cell phone just before her disappearance.

"She sounded completely fine and normal and exactly the way she did when she left us," Lang said. "There wasn't anything that made me worry or made me suspicious that anything was going on."

Lang said he called the number Gardner-Quinn had used and spoke to a man.

"He really didn't tell me a whole lot. He basically said he saw her walking up the hill toward the dorms and that's about it," Lang said.

As Vermont State Police searched the Huntington Gorge swimming hole, authorities had cordoned off at least half a block in a residential Burlington neighborhood several blocks south of where Gardner-Quinn was last seen. They were concentrating on a stately, three-story, red brick home, where there has been construction on an addition.

On Wednesday, police located, interviewed and ruled out as a suspect an unidentified man who had reportedly tried to lure a woman into his white "Subaru-style" hatchback on North Winooski Avenue, about three-quarters of a mile from where Gardner-Quinn was last seen, at approximately the same time.

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