Proclamation for “Nebraska Missing Persons Day” brings hope, awareness

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Governor Pete Ricketts signed a proclamation Monday afternoon to designate October seventeenth as “Nebraska Lacking Individuals Day”, bringing hope and consciousness to the households affected. It comes after a community of households of lacking individuals got here collectively to ask for a day of recognition.

Jannel Rap, the sister of Regina Bos who went lacking 22 years in the past on October seventeenth, is a kind of individuals.

“She was taking part in at an open mic evening in October of 2000, October seventeenth particularly, and she or he walked out from a pub referred to as Duggan’s at eleventh and Okay,” Rap stated. “And she or he’s not been seen since.”

After greater than 20 years, Rap hasn’t given up. Bos, a mom of three, went lacking when she was 40. When she disappeared, Jannel thought she’d gone to a good friend’s home and didn’t check-in.

“I used to be form of mad at her initially,” Rap stated. “After which I noticed no, she would by no means do that. She would by no means go away her youngsters. After which I used to be frantic. After which I used to be up 24/7 for about three weeks in search of her doing no matter I may.”

Since then, Jannel and her household have labored tirelessly for solutions hoping to convey Gina house. Jannel began a non-profit in Gina’s honor referred to as the “GINA for Lacking Individuals FOUNDation” to convey training and consciousness to lacking individuals.

“I used to be a kind of folks that thought that I might by no means expertise it,” Rap stated. “And after I noticed lacking individuals on TV, I believed they have been the one ones and I might really feel dangerous each time.”

Whereas some households hold looking out, others have sadly stopped. Martha Hollis’s daughter, Camisha, went lacking in Omaha in 2018. It was later found her boyfriend murdered her, however her stays have but to be discovered.

“We don’t know the place she’s at at the moment,” Hollis stated.

With October seventeenth now being “Nebraska Lacking Individuals Day,” Hollis stated she’s glad to see the state acknowledge what she went by way of, and what some households are nonetheless going by way of.

“So if different family members go lacking, you recognize, we are able to get collectively and, you recognize, attempt to determine it out,” Hollis stated.

Governor Ricketts stated out of the two,000 lacking individuals studies made in 2022, over 300 circumstances are nonetheless open. The Nebraska State Patrol’s database presently lists over 800 lacking individuals, relationship again to 1967.

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