Search continues for missing 95-year-old woman: ‘It’s like she just disappeared into thin air’
MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. (KAIT/Gray News) - The search for a missing 95-year-old woman from Arkansas continues a week after she seemingly disappeared without a trace.
A Silver Alert was issued Feb. 9 for 95-year-old Belva Day three days after Arkansas State Police say she was last seen paying her electric bill at North Arkansas Electric in Mountain Home.
Investigators with the Mountain Home Police Department tracked her movements using cameras at the utility company and area businesses. The video shows Day was at the utility company around 2 p.m. After leaving, her Buick LeSabre headed east on Highway 62, passing Walmart.
Detective Sam Seamans told KAIT that Day continued eastbound toward Fulton County. She was last sighted around 2:20 p.m. in the town of Gepp.
“After that, it’s very difficult to find a picture of her vehicle,” Seamans said.
Seamans said Day’s license plate has not triggered any license plate readers in the area or the state. Her lack of technology use has made the search difficult.
“She’s completely off-grid. No cell phone, no credit or debit cards that she could use to make purchases that we could track, no OnStar capabilities on her car,” Seamans said.
MHPD has worked with Arkansas State Police, Baxter, Fulton, Izard and Sharp Counties as well as other local police departments to locate Day.
Seamans said helicopters have searched for her vehicle in multiple counties, including Independence County. Crews have also searched bodies of water in the surrounding areas.
“It’s like she just disappeared into thin air,” he said. “This is unlike any case that I’ve ever worked as far as a missing person goes.”
Seamans said sightings of Day have been reported from Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Tennessee and Mississippi. Until her vehicle is located, he said the search will continue to challenge police.
“You can’t disregard a lead, and we’re gonna keep working on it,” Seamans said.
Police say Day’s family has also been searching for her.
“They have been doggedly tracking down and driving on the back roads, on the main roads,” Seamans said. “Talking to businesses, trying to review camera footage, and that’s been every day.”
The family believes she might have been in Calico Rock, saying a vehicle like hers was spotted in the city, but Seamans said police haven’t definitively confirmed the vehicle was Day’s.
“My hope and prayer is that someone will see that car somewhere and call it into police,” he said.
Day’s son-in-law, Brian Ades, said the 95-year-old’s family would usually drive her around town for any errands, but it wasn’t unusual for Day to drive herself on occasion.
Day has lived in Mountain Home since the 90s when she and her husband retired to the town of now-16,000 people. Ades said Day is a woman who prefers a simple life.
“She and her husband kept to themselves,” said Ades, adding that she likes to crochet and knit. “Interests outside the home were very few.”
Day is described as a woman with blue eyes and gray hair who is 5′2″ and weighs 100 pounds. She may be traveling in a beige Buick LeSabre with Arkansas license plate USADOGN.
If you have any information on Day’s whereabouts, call 911 or the Mountain Home Police Department at (870) 425-6336.
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