I know everyone knows this, but let’s not forget that he 1) told his mom he had to work late at Target around same time he was leaving Target and 2) snap saying he got very bad news around the same time. Sure, things could be coincidental, but seems unlikely.
this is ALL speculation, but I feel it would have to be something along the lines of: there is someone mom didn’t want him associating with, he was told that person was badly hurt and at Broadlawns so told mom he had to work late as a cover, it was just a ruse to get him there and something nefarious happened. OR he did want to take off and told his mom he had to work late to give him some lead time to take off. Again...only theories. Just trying to think of different scenarios where all these things fit together. Sigh. MOO
Re: your first paragraph - that’s a great point. He didn’t tell his mom that he was “working late” until around 5, 30 minutes before his shift actually ended. Even if the “bad news” Snapchat isn’t related (which would seem to be a big coincidence if not), that makes me think whatever caused him to disappear, voluntarily or involuntarily, was set into motion quickly.
A few more random observations...
The article below says in the surveillance video of him leaving Target, he appears to be texting someone and has his headphones in his ears. After apparently sending the text, he puts his phone AND headphones away. If he was texting someone, he wouldn’t need headphones in, so I’m speculating he was likely listening to music. So maybe when he got done sending the text, he put his headphones away because he would be meeting with someone shortly and it would be weird (to me) to meet someone with their headphones in.
Also, since it was Friday I wonder if Abdi got paid that day? From researching online, it looks like Target employees get paid bi-weekly, but I don’t know if that would’ve been his week to get paid. Did he possibly have a lot of cash on hand from payday that someone knew about? IF it was payday, it’s likely the pay was for the previous 2 weeks, December 29ish to January 11ish. Kids didn’t go back to school from winter break until Thursday, January 2 so he had opportunity to get a lot of hours in the beginning of that timeframe.
But payday being involved then raises other issues. If he had direct deposit and made a big withdrawal, there would be record of that. We haven’t heard anything about that, though that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And if it was a paper check, Target would have record of it being cashed. Based on the tight timeframe between when he left Target and when his last ping was, there’s virtually no way he would’ve been able to cash it in that short amount of time, so it would make no sense to harm him (again, assuming the last ping is when/if something nefarious happened to him). There is always the possibility that, again, if he got paid a paper check that day, he went to Target earlier in the day to get it and cashed it before his shift. I don’t think there’s anywhere in or near the mall where he could’ve done it on a break.
'Every time I think about him I feel panic': Search party planned for missing Des Moines teen
