A Sidon woman says she hasn’t slept since her 15-year-old daughter went missing.
“I don’t know which way to go. I don’t know what happened to her,” Chiquita Murray said Wednesday, the day after her daughter, Shakyria, disappeared from a relative’s home.
Murray
A couple of months ago, Chiquita Murray said she discovered that her daughter, a ninth grader at Amanda Elzy High School, had been sending text messages on her cellphone to adult men.
“Every time I asked her where they were from, she said they were from out of town — Greenville, Tchula, different places but they weren’t in Sidon,” the mother said.
She restricted her daughter’s cellphone access afterward but relented Monday when she arranged for Shakyria and her two brothers, ages 12 and 2, to spend the night at the nearby home of an adult nephew. The mother said Shakyria assured her that she would erase the text messages.
Chiquita Murray said she was later told that everyone went to sleep at about 3 a.m. Tuesday, and that when the nephew got up to use the restroom four hours later, Shakyria was cleaning the house. The nephew returned to bed.
At about 11 a.m., it was discovered that the front door to the home had been left wide open and Shakyria was gone, along with the cellphone.
Chiquita Murray said she has been calling the number to that phone but there is no answer. She has filed a missing person’s report with the Leflore County Sheriff’s Department. Authorities have told her they would not be able to trace the location of the phone, she said.
Meanwhile she worries about what her daughter might have gotten herself into.
“I don’t know what she had on her mind,” Chiquita Murray said. “I don’t understand why she just up and left and didn’t show back up.
Shakyria stands 5-foot-8 and weighs about 120 pounds. She was last seen wearing black-and-white shorts, a green shirt and an Army fatigue jacket. She is African-American.
Anyone with information about her disappearance is asked to call the mother at 385-5372 or the Sheriff’s Department at 453-5141.
• Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
