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Three months have handed since she made the lacking particular person report, and every passing day she is caught between moments of grief and hope.
Tecona Sullivan is clinging tightly to the latter. Her hope has been fueled by assist from teams with ft on the bottom on the lookout for her grandson T’Montez Damage. However her grief has been compounded by a gradual response by police in publicizing his case.
“We see all these photos of lacking individuals, but it surely’s simply photos, you already know, till it truly occurs in your life,” Sullivan stated in a telephone interview with the Star.
Damage, 19, was final seen within the space of 77th and Troost Avenue in Kansas Metropolis sporting a blue polo shirt and inexperienced sweatpants, based on the Kansas Metropolis Police Division. His household in St. Louis has not heard from him since what Sullivan described as a troubling telephone dialog with him the morning of Feb. 1.
The telephone name
Sullivan stated Damage didn’t sound like himself. She stated he was speaking like a child of their video name and addressing off-screen a youthful lady he had been visiting and one other man in Kansas Metropolis.
She heard her grandson say he had been “laced” and he or she took that to imply Damage had been drugged.
Sullivan thought her grandson might have been having some kind of psychological breakdown. So she satisfied a receptionist on the first hospital she present in a Google search to ship police and an ambulance to the 3900 block of Baltimore Avenue to choose Damage up that morning.
It was the one factor she may suppose to do from her residence in St. Louis.
Damage was taken to St. Luke’s on the Plaza for a medical analysis. However just a few hours later, he was discharged. Sullivan stated she believes they did so regardless of proof of a psychological well being difficulty.
“He was not in the suitable state of mind, which is why I used to be so adamant concerning the police and the hospital not letting him go,” she stated.
Sullivan, arguing her case over the telephone, urged a nurse on the hospital to look at him additional. As a substitute, the hospital paid for a zTrip taxi to take Damage to a Greyhound bus station.
However the station, at 1101 S. Troost Avenue, was closed by the afternoon. From the hospital to the bus station, Sullivan stated she misplaced contact. Nevertheless, video surveillance footage obtained by Sullivan confirmed her grandson get dropped off by the zTrip and understand the doorways had been locked.
He tried to return to get his telephone, Sullivan stated, however the driver left him there. With out his telephone, Damage walked at the least eight miles down Troost Avenue, based on KCPD.
‘I did every little thing I may’
When Sullivan talked to hospital personnel and police, she stated she felt like no person needed to take heed to her considerations. She felt like she took all the suitable steps to get him to a secure place, however stated issues shortly spiraled uncontrolled.
When she first tried to make a lacking particular person’s report, the day she misplaced contact along with her grandson, she stated she was instructed Damage didn’t meet the factors.
“When there’s a liked one speaking to you that is aware of the psychological standing of an individual, they need to hear,” Sullivan stated.
“We pay tax {dollars} and we put these individuals in management positions to guard and serve, so once you name them, you need them to imagine you, you need them to assist,” she stated. “And once I wasn’t getting that, I felt so alone.”
A lacking particular person report was taken by Kansas Metropolis police Feb. 2, the identical day they had been notified of Damage’s disappearance, based on Officer Alayna Gonzalez, a spokeswoman with KCPD. However a flyer wasn’t distributed to native media and posted on KCPD’s social media till March 27, nearly two months later.
Damage’s case shortly caught the attention of group teams in Kansas Metropolis, which have led search occasions and criticized the media and police response to Damage’s disappearance.
Sullivan stated she didn’t perceive what took police so lengthy to distribute flyers to the general public.
“I spent cash having them made, simply to be taught the police ought to have been giving me flyers,” she stated.
The solely media protection Damage’s case generated within the first month he was lacking, in reality, was on account of flyers that Sullivan herself made and distributed, not info from police. Whereas protection of lacking particular person instances is basically pushed by media shops, Sullivan stated she started to query the method by which experiences are taken and the timeline of when info is given to the general public.
Prefacing her feedback with honest condolences to the household, she mentioned the mass media consideration when Riley Pressure, a white College of Missouri pupil, went lacking a month later.
Damage attended Missouri Western State College within the fall 2023 semester, however he didn’t return for the spring 2024 semester.
“I hate to talk on it, however I’ve to,” she stated. “My Tez was lacking Feb. 1 and I didn’t get almost the eye he had.”
“It shouldn’t matter whether or not I had cash, no matter race or gender he was, none of that — he was lacking,” she stated. “I ought to have gotten the assistance I wanted at first, identical to he did.”
Capt. Jacob Becchina, a spokesman with KCPD, stated every lacking particular person case is totally different, and the investigative course of is set by detectives on the case. KCPD shares info that investigators request be shared with the general public, on the time they ask for it to be shared, he stated.
“A media flyer will likely be generated by the case detectives once they really feel it’s in the most effective curiosity of the case to succeed in out and ask for the general public’s assist,” Gonzalez stated in an e mail to The Star.
“We perceive how which will painting to households (that) we aren’t working proactively to search out their liked one,” Gonzalez stated. “We by no means desire a member of the family to really feel our division and investigators have a scarcity of curiosity of their case or don’t care, as a result of we most definitely do.”
Within the months after her preliminary frustrations of submitting a lacking particular person’s report, nevertheless, Sullivan stated she has appreciated constant contact from each police and group teams. She turned to Kansas Metropolis’s Advert Hoc Group Towards Crime and KC Uncover, who’ve canvassed a lot of town in an effort to search out him.
Volunteers are strolling along with her knocking on doorways, looking vacant buildings, posting flyers in companies and on avenue poles, and interesting with individuals in neighborhoods throughout town to unfold consciousness of Damage’s disappearance.
Search continues for T’Montez
“It’s exhausting since you don’t even know the place to begin,” stated Timesha Allen, who had canvassed alongside Troost with KC Uncover in April. “There aren’t any leads.”
Eraina Buie and her daughter Denisha Jones have attended two searches with the group. They plan to do extra.
“That is private for me,” Buie stated. “After I noticed it on the information in March, my coronary heart sank. My son, who’s schizophrenic, was lacking for a month and was with out meds. We stay in Raytown and we discovered him at a QuickTrip on 119th and Metcalf.”
“I really feel (Sullivan’s) ache, and her’s is worse as a result of she’s 4 hours away,” Buie stated. “That’s once I stated, ‘I’ve bought to do one thing.’”
Within the police investigation, a number of hours of video footage have been collected and reviewed. Detectives spoke with companies in areas the place T’Montez had been seen within the footage and initiated a number of searches of their very own.
Gonzalez stated investigators walked on foot talking to anybody within the space alongside Troost to be taught if T’Montez had been seen. Flyers had been made for native patrol divisions and given to patrol officers to be looking out for Damage.
These fliers had been additionally offered to police departments in different cities the place KCPD acquired suggestions Damage might have been staying or sighted. KCPD didn’t say what these different places had been.
A request for additional patrol was additionally submitted at division stations close to Damage’s final identified sighting, Gonzalez stated. Residence checks at a number of totally different houses have been performed.
However leads have been exhausting to return by.
“We are able to’t discover these we will’t see,” Sullivan stated, quoting a pacesetter with Searching for an Angel, a nonprofit group that helps households of lacking individuals.
She attended a assist group hosted by the group in St. Louis two months after Damage went lacking. The occasion harassed the significance of getting images in lacking particular person flyers with figuring out info.
It was a breath of contemporary air after fixed stress, Sullivan stated.
In an interview with The Star, Sullivan stated she needed to share a selected message to most people and anybody who might find out about Damage’s state of affairs.
“When you have Tez, we thanks,” she stated. “In case you felt like he was in some sort of hurt and simply needed to shelter him and preserve him from hazard, the household appreciates it.”
“We don’t wish to ask questions, we don’t care the place he’s been. Simply are you able to please launch him, let him go, name someone and we’ll decide him up.”
Sullivan remains to be caught between grief and hope. However the hope needs to be stronger, she stated.
“I nonetheless have hope. I actually imagine that Tez is alive and on the market.”
The Star’s Invoice Lukitsch contributed to this report.
