A Kent woman called 911, then disappeared. That was 10 years ago. Her family and police want to find her.
Alyssa McLemore’s family had no idea she had gone missing under suspicious circumstances until Kent police showed up at her grandmother’s house. They said they had received a 911 call from the young woman, who asked for help before her phone went dead.
The 911 call came in at 9:15 p.m. on April 9, 2009.
McLemore’s mother died three days later.
In the decade since McLemore disappeared, her aunt, Tina Russell, has led her family’s efforts to find out what happened to the bold, vivacious 21-year-old who loved dancing and roller-skating and regularly dyed her black hair blonde.
Until last year, it had become an increasingly lonely search as interest in the missing-person case waned. But in January 2018, Russell got a social-media message from a grass-roots activist involved in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement. She has since found new strength through shared heartbreak.
“Dead or alive, my family needs to bring her home,” Russell said of her niece, who would now be 31. “I have a feeling in my spirit something is going to happen.”
McLemore, who is of mixed Aleut and African American heritage, is among the unnumbered Native women and girls who have gone missing or been found violently killed in Canada and the U.S. over the past two centuries.
The MMIW movement began with First Nations in Canada, prompting a Royal Canadian Mounted Police study in 2013 and later compelling
the Canadian government to initiate a national inquiry in 2016. A final report is due at the end of this month. The movement spilled into the U.S., and the Washington Legislature
passed legislation last spring that requires the Washington State Patrol to compile data and analysis of missing Native American women in the state by June.
A Kent woman called 911, then disappeared. That was 10 years ago. Her family and police want to find her.