Son flies to New Jersey from Brazil searching for answers for mother missing nearly 2 months
NEW JERSEY (WABC) -- A woman in Elizabeth, New Jersey has been missing since March and disappeared without a trace.
No one has heard from Janaina Freire Goncalves since March 10.
Her son, who flew to her home in New Jersey from Brazil, was looking for answers.
"The last time she was seen, she was at home," Eduardo Goncalves Moreira said in Portuguese.
Moreira is her only son, and he said they are very close and would speak every day.
"It has been extremely hard to live with that pain constantly," Eduardo Goncalves Moreira said.
He spoke to Eyewitness News with the help of an interpreter before he headed back to Brazil earlier Thursday, after a 10-day mission searching for answers for his mother's whereabouts.
"Unfortunately, I did not fulfill that role," Goncalves Moreira said.
A Newark resource center for the Portuguese-speaking community has been helping him.
Goncalves Moreira says his mother got married a year ago.
Her son did not speak with her husband on this trip to New Jersey but met him last year.
"Extremely kind to my mom, everything he was doing to be kind to my mom and I," Moreira said of his mother's husband.
Janaina Goncalvez, 47, came to the U.S. on her own after the pandemic and bartended in the Newark area at Casa Nova Grill.
"What I remember is a nice girl, nice talking, always ready to work," said Casa Nova Grill owner Jose Moreira.
But she moved on to other work.
"Lately she was working as a personal trainer and she was very happy about it," Eduardo Goncalves Moreira said.
The mystery of her disappearance has the Newark area's Portuguese and Brazilian communities wondering and worried.
"I still have hope that she's going to come out alive," Jose Moreira said.
Goncalves' son has brought her belongings back to Brazil and is urging anyone who knows anything about his mom's whereabouts to contact the Union County prosecutor's office.
The prosecutor's office declined to comment on the ongoing investigation, but have appealed to the public for any information.
Eyewitness News also reached out to her husband.
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