Article from September 2019
'She's my baby. Always will be my baby:' Woman raises awareness for missing granddaughter
[...]
From the day she was born, Rose had her grandma’s heart. Verlynn told her daughter, Kimberly Longee, she wanted to take Rose home and raise her. Verlynn had given birth to 10 children, but something about that baby girl resonated deeply with her.
[...]
Rose started staying with her boyfriend, Isaiah Estes Andrews, or some of her friends. She was always welcome to come and go as she pleased, Verlynn said, but she didn’t want Rose around when she was high or drinking — the rules for anyone staying at her house.
The last day Verlynn saw Rose, she came to the house high.
“I said baby, you’ve gotta go. I don’t want that around your sister or your cousin. When you’re sober ... you can come home,” she added.
Late that evening, around 10 p.m., someone knocked on the door. Verlynn asked who it was. “Rose,” came the soft, hesitant reply. Verlynn told her to go away.
“If I knew this was going to happen, I would have opened the door,” she said. “I blame myself for what happened. If there’s any way I could just tell her, ‘Come home; call me. Let me know you’re OK.’”
Verlynn paused.
“I tell people, ‘Never tell people to go away,’” she said. “In a million years, I never thought that would happen.”
[...]
PM (
edited by me) died just days before Rose’s boyfriend was shot to death outside his home in the 300 block of Donald Road in Wapato in 2017. Deryk Alexander Donato, 25, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Yakima to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. Donato also is one of three men charged in the killing of Jacob Ozuna on Dec. 9 in a segregated gang unit at the North Front Street jail. Donato was his cellmate.
Andrews was 20 when he died. He and Rose, who were the same age, met as students at Wapato High School and had been together for a few years, Verlynn said.
“He was ready to talk, that he knew something about what happened to her,” she added. “They caught him and his friend at the store; they got away. The second time, they caught him at his auntie’s.”
