CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — A birthday party in Pilsen for Kierra Coles included everything one might expect to find at a birthday party: family and loved ones, pizza, even a cake. Blake Shaffer sang happy birthday.
Only the guest of honor was missing.
“This is four years we going on Kierra being missing,” said Coles’ mother Karen Phillips. “I just don’t understand, myself, why it’s taken four years for them to come up with something about my daughter, whether she’s found or not.”
Coles, a postal worker, was 26 years old and pregnant at the time of her disappearance in October 2018. Phillips has continued holding on to hope that her daughter will return home safe.
“It’s hard for me to stand up here to describe my feelings, or say what me and my family are going through without my daughter,” Phillips said. “Every year I pray that I don’t have to do this again, but here I am doing it again — and there’s still to be no answers after this.”
George Ivey, a spokesperson for Coles’ family, said Coles’ missing persons case is among many that show disparities in investigative resources.
“We only get it for Gabby [Petito], though,” Ivey said. “You could say that I'm playing the race card, but, shoot … We need to up our game, Chicago. We shouldn’t have to be waiting on Gabby all the time for her to get the helicopters, and the water search, and the land search, and the FBI’s here. We need that, too, for our Black brothers and sisters.”
There have not been any updates in Coles’ missing person case since Chicago police released a video over the summer that showed her withdrawing money from an ATM in Chatham.
Authorities have interviewed a person of interest who was seen with Coles the night she disappeared, but no arrests have been made.
The person of interest, who was her boyfriend at the time, has since moved out of state.
Chicago police still consider Coles is a missing person.
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