“Mekayla, we love you to the moon and back, nothing that has happened will ever change that.”
— Family Facebook plea
As last Friday came and went it had been four months since Mekayla Bali disappeared and still there is no sign of 17-year-old Yorkton girl despite ongoing efforts by the RCMP and her family to find her.
The family regularly updates its Facebook page titled “Let’s Bring Mekayla Bali Home.” In the latest post, marking four months, they say: “Our hearts are crushed beyond measure,” appealing to both the public for any piece of information and directly to Mekayla.
“Mekayla, we love you to the moon and back, nothing that has happened will ever change that,” it says.
There is also a GoFundMe campaign that has so far raised almost $7,000 of a stated goal of $40,000.
The donations are intended to offset some of the expense of having a child missing including the Paula Bali’s lost income from having to take an absence from work.
The family also hopes to offer a $25,000 reward for Mekayla’s safe return.
Meanwhile, in late July, police stepped up efforts enlisting the help of the Missing Children Society of Canada (MCSC) to put out a child search alert for Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba and re-engage the public.
“In this specific case, police have decided that they needed to re-engage the public because they are concerned for this child’s safety,” said Tricia Bailey, MCSC chief operating officer.
Bailey explained a child search alert is a measure in between an ongoing investigation and an amber alert. Mekayla’s case does not qualify for an amber alert, which requires the law enforcement agency believes the child has been abducted, that she is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death and that they have enough descriptive information about the abduction that the emergency alert has a likelihood of assisting in the child’s recover.
Earlier, on July 8, Paula made an emotional plea to the public and Mekayla at an RCMP press conference in Regina. At that time police issued a detailed timeline of Mekayla’s known movements April 12 up until the time she was last seen around 1:45 p.m. at the Yorkton bus depot.
Inspector Jennifer Ebert said police pieced together that timeline through extensive interviews, but there is one significant gap they are most interested in.
They know that she was at the east location of Tim Hortons between 10:40 and 10:45 a.m. and that after she left there she headed west on Broadway Street. At approximately 11:55 a.m. she showed up at Sacred Heart High School, where she was a Grade 11 student.
Ebert said the importance of accounting for her movements during that missing hour is that someone whom she saw, or something that she did, may be pertinent to discovering where she went.
Police also continue to search for a 40- to 50-year-old man with a stocky build, muscular arms and a large tattoo of a cross surrounded by flames below his left elbow. Investigators do not suspect the man in any wrongdoing, but he was seen at the bus depot at the same time as Mekayla and left there around the same time. Investigators simply wish to speak to him to determine if he has any information about Mekayla, the inspector explained.
Anybody with information can call the Yorkton RCMP at 306-786-2400, Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS) or MCSC at 1-800-661-6160.
