Family of missing 23-year-old woman from Brooklyn seeks answers in her disappearance
BROOKLYN, New York (WABC) -- A family is searching for answers after a young woman from Brooklyn vanished after taking a bus to Washington D.C. to make posters for someone she met online.
TiJae Baker, a budding artist, was in her final semester of college.
The 23-year-old lived at home with her mother, but now she's missing.
"After this rally, I'm going back out there. I'm going to find my daughter," mother Toquanna Baker said.
The nightmare began on May 1. TiJae took the bus to Washington D.C. supposedly to do some posters for a woman she had met online. Then came the nightmare of silence.
"Where's my daughter? She got off at Union Station D.C.," Toquanna Baker said.
The desperate family filed numerous police reports but complain the first police flier put their missing person on a wanted poster.
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Eventually, the mother found some leads and was given surveillance video which she shared with Eyewitness News reporter Lucy Yang.
Eyewitness News was told TiJae called from a phone in a salon on June 1, and in a whispered and scared voice begged to be rescued.
"She said just tell her mother to come get her -- now," grandmother Roxanne Baker said.
By the time they raced to Maryland, TiJae was gone.
The mother tells Lucy Yang, she has tracked down the woman who initially asked her daughter to come D.C. She fears her only child may have stepped into some kind of cult.
"We believe more needs to be done," councilmember Charles Barron said.
"We are asking for justice to make sure Ms. Baker comes home," councilmember Darlene Mealy said.
TiJae Baker's mother said she hasn't been sleeping at all.
"It's been over a month," she said. "I just want my child to return."
It's a mother's desperate cry.
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