By The newspaper
03 Oct 2023, 1:56 PM EDT
Shamari Brantley, a 22-year-old woman missing in Illinois since August 30, could have been in Pennsylvania and New York, since her cell phone was apparently found at the Zerega Av. Metro station in the Bronx.
Her family even moved to NYC in the hope of finding the young woman, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, multiple personalities and bipolar disorder, according to her mother and sister.
“New York is so big…” his sister Chanece Lewis sobbed during an interview with Pix11. “We have no one here except the family we brought to help us post flyers to find my sister!”
In the midst of her disorders, to avoid hearing voices, the young woman uses her phone to listen to music and walk, said her mother, Artimece Cotton. “I think she hitchhiked with truckers and ended up here in the Bronx.”
He added that Illinois investigators learned that Brantley was seen by police in Pennsylvania, apparently before arriving in New York.
Cotton said that when her daughter left their home in Wheaton, Illinois, in August, she tried to report her missing to the Dupage County Sheriff’s Office, but she believes they didn’t take her seriously “because (the victim) is 22 years old.”
When the mother retrieved her daughter’s cell phone records, she saw an unknown number for a man in New York City and contacted him in early September. “He was calling her at about 2:30 in the morning,” her mother recalled.
The family was even more alarmed when they learned that Shamari’s cell phone was found at the Zerega Av Metro station. A woman answered when they kept calling Shamari’s number and the phone was eventually handed over to the police.
The family has been staying at a motel in New Jersey because it is less expensive. They have started a GoFundMe page titled “Help bring Shamari home.” “We’d like to find her while we’re here,” said Brantley’s brother-in-law, Kevin Lewis. “If you know anything or saw anything, please call.”
Anyone with information should call 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) and in Spanish 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). Also through the website crimestoppers.nypdonline.org or by text message to 274637 (CRIMES), followed by TIP577. All communications are strictly confidential.
In a similar case, over the weekend a 9-year-old girl was kidnapped in New York for almost two days. In addition, the girl of Mexican origin Dulce María Alavez has been missing for four years, last seen in a park in New Jersey when she was 5 years old, in 2019. A reward offered of $75,000 dollars and the work of the FBI – one of the forces most advanced research facilities in the world – have not been enough to find her or at least know what happened to her.