‘Please come home’: Allisha Watts’ mom desperate to find missing daughter

SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. — The mother of a North Carolina woman who disappeared last month is begging her daughter to come home.

Evex Franklin spoke to ABC affiliate WTVD at her home in Southern Pines, which is in Moore County. Her 39-year-old daughter, Allisha Watts, was last seen leaving her boyfriend’s home in Charlotte’s University City neighborhood on July 16.

“Please come home,” Franklin cried, speaking to WTVD.

She told WTVD about the last time she spoke to her daughter over the phone on July 14, two days before she was last seen.

“She was telling me she was going out of town and it was something she had to do,” Franklin said through tears.

Watts was supposed to return home to Moore County on July 17, but Franklin said she knew something was wrong because her daughter never showed up.

PREVIOUS STORIES:

• CMPD: Private citizen, not police, entered Allisha Watts into missing persons database
• ‘Allisha would never leave on her own,’ says missing woman’s family
• CMPD speaks about investigation for the first time since Allisha Watts vanished
• Shell casing, allegations of domestic violence reported at home where Allisha Watts was last seen
• Allisha Watts case: Missing woman’s boyfriend was noted as person of interest

“Something kept driving me to her pictures,” Franklin told WTVD. “I’m sitting here in this chair like I am now and I kept looking at that picture, to that picture, and I kept looking at them shaking. It was trying to tell me something.”

Since her disappearance, Channel 9 has been investigating resources available to help find Watts, including a national database that is now being used in the case. Police said it wasn’t even them that put her in that database initially.

Channel 9′s Genevieve Curtis learned Allisha Watts is now in that public national database, which is called NamUs. It’s a resource that allows jurisdictions to share information about missing persons cases.

Watts’ name was just added to the database on Aug. 15. In a statement the next day, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said it was actually a private citizen -- not them -- who initiated the entry. CMPD said to ensure the accuracy of the information, they then submitted an entry for Watts themselves.

It comes after the national organization Black and Missing, which is helping Watts’ family, asked police to do more.

“I want them to do more than what they say they are doing,” Franklin said.

MORE PREVIOUS STORIES:

• Missing woman’s car was found with unresponsive boyfriend at Anson County DMV
• Missing woman’s SUV found in Anson County, CMPD says
• Friends, family offer support in search for missing woman last seen in Charlotte
• ‘Where is Allisha?’: Investigators search home where missing woman was last seen
• Who is Allisha Watts, the Moore County woman who vanished from Charlotte?

She told WTVD she is worried about her daughter and believes she’s in danger.

“She’s hurt somewhere,” Franklin said.

Franklin told WTVD she’s thankful for support from her family and from her community.

“Please, please, please. We need all the help we can get to find my baby,” she said.

Next week, there will be a search for Allisha Watts in Lane, South Carolina, which is where her boyfriend’s family home is. Detectives have already searched his home on Pamela Lorraine Drive in University City twice, as well as a black Audi SUV sources say is his in the driveway.

Watts’ boyfriend, James Dunmore, has a history of domestic violence and served time in prison for kidnapping. Watts’ car was found in Anson County on July 18 with her boyfriend inside it. He appeared to have survived a suicide attempt, investigators said, and Watts was not in the car.

Dunmore has not been named a suspect in the case.

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