For Baltimore police, the search for missing Phylicia Barnes has becomes as agonizing as it is futile. Lead after lead has evaporated, tips have gone nowhere and not a single person has reporting seeing her since she disappeared Dec. 28.
I sat down with the squad of homicide detectives who have done nothing but search for the North Carolina teenager for the past several weeks. Few times do you hear police say they have no clues, no leads, nothing in a case.
The picture by TShe Sun's Kenneth K. Lam shows Baltimore Police Department's homicide commander Maj. Terrence McLarney (from left) and homicide detectives Sgt. William P. Simmons, Daniel T. Nicholson, James Lloyd, Robert Burns and John Riddick.
Listen to the lead investigator, shown below in a picture by Lam:
"This is a young girl who was well-liked in high school," said Detective Daniel T. Nicholson IV of the homicide unit, the lead investigator. "She was doing what any young person would do, visiting her family … and she vanished from the face of the earth. That's hard to believe."
Nicholson, a 17-year police veteran with two daughters of his own, said the case is "frustrating in that we've run out every lead, no matter how ridiculous or impossible it might seem."
The detective said he's in daily contact with Phylicia's father, who travels between Baltimore and his home in Atlanta, and with her mother in Monroe, N.C. His biggest fear, he says, is that "it's not going to be a happy ending."