Family appeals for help in missing girl case
It will be one month and two weeks that nine year old Jay Karen Blades, a student of Lake Independence Methodist School, has been missing. According to the family, Blades left home on the morning of October seventh to go to school, but never did show up for classes. Blades, who had been having problems at home, has a history of running away, however the family says this is the first time Jay has stayed away from home so long. A disturbing development is that the green and black dress she was last seen wearing, was discovered later the afternoon of her disappearance on the body of thirteen year old Sherilee Nicholas, the young girl found murdered off the Western Highway. The family believes that Blades is still alive but being held against her will. Today, a distraught mother, Sharine Garbutt, and grandmother Norma McKoy are pleading for her release and a safe return home.
Norma McKoy, Grandmother
“Well when I see it on the TV and I see a little girl have on my granddaughter dress, I say Jay must have seen something or she see when the man took her in the bush, something like that and killed and run out of the bush. Well I feel the person who killed the little girl may hold my granddaughter too.”
Q: “In your heart, Norma do you feel your granddaughter is still alive?”
Norma McKoy
“I feel like she is still alive because we are keeping praying, the whole family. I feel that somebody may be holding her because if nobody was keeping her, then she would have come home, find someway to come home, you know, things like that. But somebody got her out there and I would really want whosoever have her to let her go and send her home because the family is praying and we are waiting.”
Sharine Garbutt, Mother
“It is really hard to explain, it is really hard. Not knowing where your daughter is, not knowing how she feels, what she is doing, what she is eating. It is really rough, you know, and if there is any mother out there, you know, is in my position, they can also tell you the same thing. I am begging; I am asking; I am pleading, whosoever have Jay to please let her go. You know she belongs home. She has a family. She has her sisters that are praying for her each day, each night.
Whosoever is listening to me, please, consider in your heart not another one, I am asking you, I am begging you, by the grace of God, please let her go. Jay need to be home, I know she is out there, somewhere, but I can’t tell where. I can feel it. Day and night I go home, I can’t eat, I sit down and I cry each night that my little girl will come back home to me. Please help me; I am begging you whosoever have Jay, whosoever is listening to me please send her home. She does not deserve this.”
Garbutt says if there is anyone out there who may know her daughter’s whereabouts, to please contact the nearest police station or call her at 44832. Meanwhile the police say the last report they received is that someone resembling Blades was seen on Central American Boulevard during the Hurricane Mitch evacuation. Since then they have heard nothing.
