(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Friends and family of a 13-year-old girl who disappeared from her home in Gary nearly two weeks ago are out searching for her, passing out flyers and pleading for her safe return.
“Ja’Niyah, if you’re listening, we just want you home. We love and we miss you,” said Dalia Guerrero, the grandmother of Ja’Niyah McMichael.
She has been assembling search groups in Gary for nearly two weeks. She’s on leave from her job.
Guerrero doesn’t know what could have happened.
“No, I don’t. I have no idea. I just know she’s not in my eyesight and she’s missing.”
She’s been dealing with a lot of fear about what has happened to Ja’Niyah.
“Yes, we do have those fears and I pray to God that nothing, you know we don’t go there but if it is that’s just something that we have to deal with, but at least it will bring us closure, we’ll have her.”
The girl was last seen at her home near 19th and Virginia streets on Aug. 11.
Her mother said everyone went to bed the night before and she was gone in the morning.
“She’s not a street kid, she’s a very sweet loving girl,” Guerrero said, calling this behavior very much out of character.
She believes police were slow to take her disappearance seriously.
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