Amid civil unrest and a global pandemic, a community is crying out for help in finding their missing loved one. The people in Chenell Gilbert’s life are coming together on the west side of Indianapolis in search of the beloved substitute teacher who went missing on June 9.
The search party was organized by Danyette Smith, who told RTV6, “We need answers. We want to know where she is and we’re out here to today to look for her and hopefully find something that can give us answers to where she is.”
Volunteers are out pounding the pavement, handing out flyers bearing a picture of Chenell and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance to business owners and even leaving them under the mats outside Indianapolis homes, and sharing her story feverishly on social media—anything to keep Chenell’s face in the media amid a global pandemic and global unrest.
Chenell, a loving mother and grandmother, was last seen in the Sungate subdivision near Rockville and Girl School Roads in the first few hours of June 9. “For her children, her friends, her family—this is so unlike her,” Smith told RTV6. “This is just not her. They are extremely weary. We just need answers…On behalf of her daughters, her daughters truly miss her. They cannot wait until she returns home and each hour, each moment is agonizing and definitely scary for them.”
Chenell Gilbert was last seen wearing a black sweatsuit, with a black tote purse and braided hair. The group is asking anyone with information to contact police immediately so Chenelle can be reunited with her children and grandchildren.
All open missing person cases right now are facing a difficult challenge of maintaining media attention. Coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic has been taking media attention away from vulnerable missing persons. However, “There is a full community, a full force. There’s power behind this and we’re here to use that power to look for her,” said Danyette Smith. Anyone with information on Gilbert’s whereabouts is asked to contact the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department at 317-327-3811 or Crime Stoppers at 317-262-TIPS.
(or 72 hours) before labeled as missing. However, this is misleading. In circumstances where there has been some evidence of violence or the reason for absence is unusual, then a prompt investigation is called for.
As science continues to build up vast amounts of knowledge, this question might sound misplaced. Of course there are still many wonderful discoveries to be made, but I am concerned that many people have the idea that science is completely objective and has somehow rubbished Christianity. Well, has it, or is it still missing something? What am I getting at?
We’ve all heard of ‘missing persons’ and often official PR awareness campaigns like ‘Missing Person’s Week’ designed to encourage ‘missing persons’ to return home and to encourage the public to assist in locating such people. For friends and family, having a loved one or colleague go missing is traumatic. But not only individuals go missing. Sometimes it’s a whole group of people vanish. All too often a ship or plane goes missing. One can even up that ante and have whole communities vanish into apparently thin air. In a few cases, an entire culture or civilization has come and gone with no one the wiser. The questions really are, are such events from the personal to the collective, of relatively little interest since natural explanations abound, or are there ‘paranormal’ influences at work?