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Kay-Alana Turner
“I am never ever going to stop until I find her,” Rosa Calhoun tells anyone willing to help in her increasingly desperate search to find daughter, Margaret “Kay-Alana” Turner, who was last seen March 10 near the 18000 block of Country Hills Drive in Tomball.
Kay-Alana had just left a friend’s Hardin County home, experiencing what her family calls a mental health crisis, leaving behind her personal effects, plans for the future, and a family who will stop at nothing to find out where she’s gone. “I’ll search for her ’til the day I die.”
While families across the nation celebrated Father’s Day a few weeks ago, Kay-Alana’s Lumberton family marked 100 days since they last saw their loved one.
The young former Lamar University Mirabeau Scholar had been staying with a friend in Silsbee on the evening of March 9 and, after her friend is said to have left the home assuming Kay-Alana was still sleeping, she was seen walking in front of the house seemingly lost and confused.
The family was later alerted that KayAlana was seen walking to neighboring houses and knocking on doors.
“We believe she was struggling with a recent medication change and had not slept in at least three days,” Calhoun said.
A short series of calls and relocations that evening led Kay-Alana to Holly Creek Trails in Tomball, where a homeowner found her in their driveway at approximately 6 a.m., asleep in her vehicle. After receiving no response to attempts to rouse the sleeping driver, the homeowner contacted police. According to Kay-Alana’s family, she then fled the scene in her vehicle, frightened.
“She drove about half a mile into the woods before her car was bogged down and stopped,” Calhoun explained, “and she began running on foot, leaving behind all of her belongings, including her phone.”
According to her family’s timeline, the last time Kay-Alana was physically seen was when she was driving into the woods around 7 a.m. on March 10, followed by Harris County law enforcement. Harris County detectives report that Kay-Alana didn’t follow lawful commands when police approached her at the stranger’s home in Tomball, instead driving away from officers and striking an officer with her vehicle in the process.
Kay-Alana is currently named on the Harris County Crime Stopper’s Top 20 Most Wanted list, charged with aggravated assault against a public servant and evading arrest with a vehicle.
Wanted or missing, Kay-Alana’s mom said she doesn’t even care at this point – she just wants someone to look for her daughter.
Kay-Alana is one of 123 current missing persons last seen in Harris County, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS).
Who’s counting?
After speaking to several law enforcement agencies, and searching DPS and national missing persons government websites, what unfolded are inaccurate and incomplete databases pervasive throughout the system; local officials offered revelations of missing persons not on the radar of outside agencies.
According to Captain Onafre Tyler with the Beaumont Police Department, the law enforcement agency has 12 open cases originating within the last 10 years that includes nine males and three females; all are adults. According to DPS, a total of only eight cases of individuals missing and last seen in Jefferson County, remain open.
According to Orange County Sheriff’s Office Captain Joey Jacobs, the agency is assisting Jasper County with the missing persons case of Wayne Ayers, last seen driving in Jasper County on April 19, with the vehicle subsequently being found burned in Vidor on Mansfield Ferry Road.
Additionally, Jacobs says that his office continues to investigate the missing persons case of Joshua Parrott, 22, who was last seen Memorial Day weekend in 2010, and is suspected deceased. Parrott, however, is not listed on the DPS Missing Persons Clearinghouse (MPCH).
“As far as why the records don’t match up from in-house files and the DPS website, the burden is on local agencies to complete a separate form to get them added to the Missing Persons Clearinghouse (MPCH) and, depending on the direction of the case, that may not be completed every time,” said Jacobs after speaking to the Texas Rangers who assist with these cases.
Hardin County Sheriff Mark Davis said that, within the last decade, a single missing persons case remains open for Paul James Gibson, last seen in Lumberton on June 1, 2017; no other open cases remain that have originated within the last decade.
This year alone, DPS lists 24 missing persons cases since January that are still open – 24 families searching for their loved ones, sitting in silence waiting for answers, and praying for mercy – just like Rosa Calhoun.
“When Kay-Alana was a kid, her friends would pick and call me the Rosa-nator because I had to track Kay down when she wouldn’t answer her phone, and that used to bother me because I didn’t want them thinking that of me,” Calhoun reflected. “But, since this has started, I am the Rosa-nator.
“I am going to track her down and do whatever it takes to find her.”
Another day, another let-down
Kay-Alana’s family stood by waiting for answers June 24 as a team from San Antonio used underwater drones to search the creek near where she was last seen; nothing was found.
Then, the weary family held their breath yet again on June 28 when they learned that Texas EquuSearch teams were working the wooded area in the creek’s neighborhood once again. And, once again – nothing. 119 days – nothing.
Anyone with information on Kay-Alana Turner’s whereabouts is asked to call Texas EquuSearch at (281) 309-9500, or the Harris County Sheriff’s Office at (713) 755-7427.