(NewsNation) — Waiting is the hardest part for Canitha Taylor.
Not knowing what happened to her daughter Cieha, who went missing in February 2020, weighs on the mind of Canitha. But she does know one thing for sure: Cieha would never leave her like this.
“Cieha was a unique personality, she was big as life,” her mother said. “Smile would light up the room. She met no strangers. I think everybody always loved to be around her.”
In February 2020, Cieha, then 28, was hanging out with the wrong crowd, according to her mother. She was living with a boyfriend and a friend about 30 minutes from home in Plant City, Florida.
On the night she went missing, Cieha got into a fight with her boyfriend, her mother said. Cieha was supposed to go to a friend’s house. She called her friend crying, upset from the fight.
She never made it to the friend’s house.
Days later, Cieha’s car, containing nearly everything she owned, was found by a friend parked along the side of the road.
Everything, her clothes, her purse, her ID, her driver’s license, her Social Security card. everything she owned. Her phone,” Canitha said. “She never went anywhere without her phone. … The phone was the main thing to set me to think something’s wrong.”
A missing person’s report was filed with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department, a report that led to a shocking discovery.
Police officers had actually spotted Cieha’s vehicle days before, running while parked on train tracks. No one was inside.
Police said on a podcast in August of 2020 they conducted a “thorough” search of Cieha’s vehicle and recovered fingerprints from inside. All of the fingerprints found, which included Cieha’s, were of people known to have been in the vehicle.
Flyers were handed out, doors were knocked on. Suspects, including her boyfriend, were interviewed. … But police still find themselves at a dead end in the case.
Cieha’s boyfriend was the last person to see her alive, according to her mother. Police have not ruled him out as a suspect.
Her family just wants answers.
“We just want to know what happened. more so than how it happened or who did it,” Canitha said. “It’s more so let’s have closure. We’ll worry about that later, of who done it and why.”
