Crystal Morrison Prentice - Concord, N.C.

[LadyBlue]

Mom last seen Aug. 23 walking in Concord, N.C.

A North Carolina woman who has been missing for three weeks grew up, attended church and played basketball in Rock Hill, family and friends say.

Crystal Morrison Prentice, a 31-year-old mother of an 8-year-old boy, was last seen walking away from her job at Connextions Recruiting on Corporate Drive in Concord, N.C., on Aug. 23, police say.

Forty minutes after Prentice showed up to work that Thursday, she decided to leave because she wasn’t feeling well, her sister, Mechelle Carey, said. Around 12:40 p.m., Prentice made a phone call to someone “who was like a grandfather to her,” asking him to pick her up and take her home, Carey said.

When he arrived, Prentice was gone. Co-workers and eyewitnesses have told police and her family they saw Prentice walking down a road between where she worked and Interstate 85 in Concord. She didn’t tell anyone she was leaving.

“We can’t figure out why she went walking. She’s asthmatic; what would make her go do that?
www.heraldonline.com/2012/09/12/4259015/missing-woman-a-rock-hill-native.html

[LadyBlue]

As more than 100 people searched over the weekend for a Concord woman missing since August, her sister said the family is searching for peace and answers above all.

“Every day, it really becomes in some ways more unbelievable, but it also becomes your new normal,” Mechelle Carey said. “I think we’re honest about the fact that we’re praying for peace and whatever that entails.”

Crystal Morrison, 31, was last seen on Aug. 23, shortly after she called a friend to pick her up from work at Connextions Recruiting, a customer service company in Concord.

When the friend arrived, Morrison was gone.

“The $30 million question is, why did she walk out? Why did she leave after she made the phone call?” asked Kevin Ryan, the private investigator hired by the family. “Someone out there knows where she’s at and what’s going on. I honestly believe that.”

Over the weekend, the Wilmington-based CUE Center for Missing Persons partnered with Concord police to organize the most comprehensive search to date in the Morrison case.

Professional search teams searched by horse, ATV, foot and car in a four-square-mile area near Connextions, off International Drive in Concord.

The group also took out nearly a dozen canine units to help with the search.

“I hope we find something related to her case, if not her herself,” Monica Caison, founder of the CUE Center, said. “Nobody is going to give up looking for her, I know that. She’s got some dedicated law enforcement that are working very hard on her case.”

Should the search yield no leads, Ryan said, investigators will at least be able to cross off one more place from their list of areas to search.

Witnesses saw Morrison walking down International Drive, then turning right onto N.C. 73 toward U.S. 29 on Aug. 23.

No one has reported seeing or hearing from the 31-year-old single mother since then. Her bank and credit cards show no activity.

“Based on the interviews I’ve done, I can almost say for certainty that she definitely did not run away,” Ryan said.

By all accounts, Morrison was a doting mother to her 8-year-old son, Kyson, and would never have left him willingly.

Police can verify she walked past the Mistletoe Ridge neighborhood, but her trail runs cold around Waters Edge Apartments, before N.C. 73 crosses Winecoff School Road.

Earlier reports placed her inside the McDonald’s at N.C. 73 and International Drive, but neither receipts nor video footage confirm that.
www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/01/28/3817240/group-hunts-missing-woman.html