Phylicia!

I haven't watched Nancy Grace's show in about two years. I'm aware that it still comes on though. I think I may have been channel surfing one night out of pure boredom and I came upon it. I watched her for a few minutes...(That's about all I can take of her usually) and she was championing the search for yet another missing girl...A missing white girl. Seems like every week a white girl goes missing somewhere in the United States ....Not just on Nancy Grace, but on Discovery ID channel too. That's the new crime station on cable that I must admit is one of my guiltier pleasures.

I actually was beginning to think that Black girls seldom if ever vanish...That nobody snatches them and that they don't run away. Of course , this is not true..It's like everything else in this country sometimes.. It just doesn't get reported...Nobody ever hears about it except the people involved.

It's come to my attention through Facebook and Twitter, where I seem to be getting most of my news now of days that a young Black woman has indeed vanished into thin air...She has everything in common with the white females who have vanished...Young, pretty...smart..et al.
I haven't watched Nancy Grace in awhile...so I hope that this story is running on her show.


Phylicia Barnes from the small North Carolina city of Monroe, about 25 miles southeast of Charlotte, vanished into thin air on or about Dec. 28 while visiting her older half-siblings for the holidays. Since then, all calls to her cell phone have gone straight to voicemail, she's been a no-show on her social media profiles and she hasn't used her ATM card.

Baltimore police call it one of the strangest and most vexing missing persons cases they've ever investigated, and despite getting help from the FBI, they have few leads.

Phylicia Barnes' 17th birthday was Jan. 12. Her mother, Janice Sallis, remains confident she'll be found. "I'm going to wait until she comes home to give her a party," Sallis said by phone Wednesday from Atlanta, where she's relocated since her daughter's disappearance. "I spent her day being happy. I was happy when she was born, and every 12th of January, I'm going to be happy because that was a happy day for me."

Police alerted local media soon after Phylicia Barnes' disappearance, sounding the alarm that her disappearance was unusual because she had no history of disputes with her family or trouble with the law. Investigators believe she may have been kidnapped and possibly taken out of state, and with no suspects or physical evidence, they fear the worst, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. More than 100 police officers combed a northwest Baltimore park a week after her disappearance, but found no signs of a body or clues to her whereabouts.

Phylicia's smiling face, in a photo taken from her Facebook page, greets motorists on billboards as they drive into the city. Police have gotten about 70 tips, but none has panned out, Guglielmi said.

Investigators are re-interviewing about a dozen friends and associates of Phylicia's 27-year-old half-sister, Deena Barnes, who saw the young woman in the days before she disappeared, and are hammering away at any discrepancies in their statements, Guglielmi said. Police have executed search warrants but haven't recovered any evidence.

Sallis has expressed concern about the number of strangers Deena Barnes allowed into her apartment while Phylicia was staying there, but Guglielmi said there's no indication those individuals were up to anything out of the way, describing the atmosphere at the apartment as similar to a college dorm.

Phylicia Barnes is an honor student at Union Academy, a public charter school in Monroe,North Carolina and she was on track to graduate early and had already been accepted to several colleges.

Two years ago, she reconnected with her half-siblings on Facebook, and she traveled to Baltimore several times to visit them, her mother said.

"I'm very family-oriented. I didn't want her scale to be unbalanced, to know my side of the family and not know her father's side of the family," Sallis said.

But since Phylicia's disappearance, she regrets allowing her daughter to stay with Deena, who admitted allowing Phylicia to drink alcohol and was generally more permissive with the teenager than Sallis would have liked, Sallis said.

Deena Barnes could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Phylicia's father, Russell Barnes -- who is long divorced from Sallis and did not raise Phylicia -- did not respond specifically to Sallis' complaints but said Wednesday that criticism of Deena was unfair.

Russell Barnes has been in Baltimore since the day after Phylicia's disappearance and said Wednesday he intends to remain in the city until she is found. He is organizing volunteer searches.

"We don't believe she's gone or anything like that," he said. "We think somebody just has her."

Deena's ex-boyfriend was the last person to see Phylicia, according to police and the girl's parents. Most of Phylicia's clothing and shoes were left inside her sister's apartment, and she didn't have much money, Russell Barnes said -- an indication that even if she left of her own volition, she didn't plan to be gone long.

"She didn't know anything about Baltimore city," Russell Barnes said. "She would never leave her sister, really. She loves her sister."

This is all very, very disturbing...It kind of reminds me of the Natalie Holloway case of a few years ago. The cheerleader from Alabama who vanished in Aruba and still hasn't been found...I am joining along with all of my friends and fellow bloggers and social networkers in calling for any help, any tips anybody out there has ,that will help find this girl. I am praying that she is found alive... I hope that John Walsh and Nancy Grace lend a helping hand also.