The Nassau Guardian
Mothers make plea for girls to return home
Christine Joseph said she has slept in her front room every night for the past 10 days hoping her 16-year-old daughter will return home safely.
Joseph’s daughter, Crystal Clarke, was one of two girls who reportedly ran away from their homes on March 10.
Joseph, 33, said her daughter’s friend, Wilnika Bullard, 16, also left her mother’s home that day.
Joseph, along with Bullard’s mother, Mia Bullard, 35, made emotional pleas yesterday for their daughters to return home.
The mothers, who have become friends through this ordeal, said they believe their girls each left home with a small bag of their belongings.
On the day their daughters left, the women said, they both came home to find several of their daughters’ things missing.
Having been gone for nearly two weeks, the mothers say their initial anger and disbelief have turned into fear.
Calls to their daughters’ cell phones have not been answered. However, the women said their daughters responded to their friends through Facebook messages shortly after they ran away. They believe the girls are together but don’t know where they are.
Bullard said she suffered an emotional breakdown on Wednesday night at a bar where she works as a waitress, and had to leave work.
“Everyone is concerned,” she said.
“These children don’t know that Nassau is dangerous,” Bullard said. “People are dying every day and you don’t know how these people are dying. I can’t sleep. My eyes are [swollen]. I’ve just been crying. I’ve been to this place and that place looking. I don’t know.”
Joseph said she fears that one day she’ll get a call that something bad has happened to her daughter.
“I’m very afraid,” she said. “I’m depressed.”
Superintendent Stephen Dean said police have found that most often the girls who runaway go to a relative, friend or boyfriend’s house. In some cases, he said, they move in with older men.
The women are asking anyone who have seen their children to contact them.
Bullard can be reached at 443-3598 and Joseph can be reached 425-2639.
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