(NewsNation) — It’s been nearly a month since Nick and Kelly Locklear last saw their daughter, 31-year-old Ciera Breland, who vanished without a trace.
The pain and hurt can be heard in their voices.
“Every day, it becomes solidified in your mind that she’s definitely not coming back ever and that her son’s never gonna see his mother, that we’re never gonna see our daughter,” Ciera Breland’s mother Kelly Locklear said.
Locklear said after almost a month, the family is losing hope she is alive.
“If she were alive, she would’ve been home,” she said.
Last month, Breland and her husband Xavier, their pup and 5-month-old baby boy Jackson drove the 550 or so miles from their home in Carmel, Indiana to Georgia to visit both of their parents.
The couple first stopped in Johns Creek – just outside of Atlanta, to see Xavier’s mom.
“She had been sending messages that she didn’t plan on going back to Indiana, she wanted to stay — she said she needed to make it a surprise for him,” Locklear said.
Then, Breland drove herself and the baby alone for about an hour to her parents’ home in Cleveland, Georgia on Feb. 19.
“She came here Saturday and stayed til the 20th,” her father, Nick Locklair, said of the last time he saw her.
Six days later, the family received a call from the Carmel, Indiana police.
“He said, ‘Your daughter is missing. And I say, ‘In Indiana?’ And he says, ‘Yes, in Indiana — Xavier called and said that she left last night,” her father recalled.
According to her father, Breland allegedly left their home in the middle of a cold winter night wearing just a T-shirt and shorts. She left behind her keys, wallet, car and her baby boy — and didn’t return.
“She would not have left that child,” her father said. “Just very outgoing, very friendly, very driven. She was a really easy to raise child.”
Breland was a daddy’s girl who worked hard, eventually fulfilling her dream of becoming a lawyer.
But her behavior began to change about a year ago, shortly after relocating to Indiana with her husband.
Then came allegations of abuse.
“There was actually an officer that had been called out to their house one night and said he was a specialist in domestic violence. And he said, he literally said, ‘He’s not telling the truth,'” Breland’s father said. “‘She’s not telling the truth. She’s not letting him take the consequences for his actions. So we can’t do anything about it. But I’m gonna tell you this escalating so fast that something really bad is gonna happen very soon.’”
Breland’s husband Xavier is the sole person of interest in this case.
Police discovered the last trace of Breland is on home security footage from her mother-in-law’s home in Johns Creek – dated Feb. 24.
“That’s the last known location that anybody’s actually been able to see her that we know of at this point,” said Capt. Todd Hood with the Johns Creek Police Department.
Hood says they aren’t releasing the footage yet but they’ve plastered billboards and flyers across the city asking the public for any information that might help.
“Somebody knows something,” Hood said. “We’re begging them to come forward at this point and give us just some information as to where she is or maybe what’s happening.”
A NewsNation reporting team was repeatedly yelled at to go away when seeking comment at the home of Xavier’s family in St. Johns.
Breland’s husband is currently back in Georgia, booked into the Coweta County Jail on unrelated aggravated stalking charges against another woman.
The Brelands said it appears he’s no longer cooperating with detectives.
It has left them feeling hopeless about finding their daughter, saying, “There’s nothing like this whether we’ll ever know or not … (it’s) a reality I can’t imagine this devastating will ever go away. That feeling of lost, I don’t think I’ll ever get over.”