Family of missing woman searches for answers 5 1/2 years after disappearance

CHARLOTTE — A family continues to search for a woman more than five years after she vanished.

“The entire family,” said Annette Gonzalez, whose daughter is missing. “Everybody misses her, and I wish we could find a lead. I wish someone can come forward and say, ‘Yes, I know something.’”

Carmen Gonzalez, a mother of three boys, was 27 years old when she was reported missing in 2016.

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“She disappeared in 2016 but in 2010, she had a car accident and that caused brain injuries,” the mother told Channel 9 reporter DaShawn Brown. “So, Carmen really was a Silver Alert. Her brain. Her way of thinking. It was like a 10-year-old. “I truly feel like someone took advantage of her.”

Annette Gonzalez said her daughter initially tried calling her for help on a Sunday in 2016. But Carmen Gonzalez turned her mother down for any help.

Days later, Carmen Gonzalez tried calling her mom again.

“It was her number, but I couldn’t hear nothing on the other side,” Annette Gonzalez said. “Not from her. I heard voices, men’s voices. It was like she called and left the phone open for us to hear or to track her down or something.”

The mother has not heard from her daughter since that day.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Missing Persons Unit has been investigating the case.

“Everything has been tracked down,” Detective Mary Whitcomb said. “We’ve kind of taken those leads as far as we can.”

Whitcomb said the public must play an important role.

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“When we get leads, we follow them to the very end, to the best of our ability,” she said. “But the community, we really have to work in partnership with the community, and they are our eyes and ears. So we’re hoping to generate new leads. It’s been several years since the case came in or since we had any viable information.”

Carmen Gonzalez’s sister, Liza Gonzalez, said the family has done most of the footwork.

“We’ve gotten more answers ourselves, than from CMPD,” she said.

Liza Gonzalez said they have followed up on leads and knocked on doors while searching for her sister.

“And we looked through ditches to try to find my sister,” she said. “Even to the point of finding a person that’s using my sister’s ID.”

The Gonzalezes are pleading for someone with information to come forward.

“We don’t care who you are, at this point, what happened,” Liza Gonzalez said. “Just lead us to where she’s at, so one day we can give her boys’ answers, because they ask about her. And we don’t know how to answer some of those questions with those boys. They’re too young to understand.”

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