After 95-year-old Belva Day was missing for weeks and then found hours from her home, her family in Arkansas is still seeking answers in regards to what happened.
JACKSONVILLE, Ark. — After having been missing for weeks and then tragically being found dead while inside her vehicle and hours from her hometown of Mountain Home, the family of Belva Day is still seeking answers in regards to what happened.
On February 6, the 95-year-old told her sister that she was going to pay an electric bill.
However, that was the last time that Day’s family was in contact with her. About three days later, a Silver Alert was activated with hopes of being able to find her.
A few weeks later, on March 5, police found her beige Buick on the Little Rock Air Force Base down an embankment in a wooded area. The car was found with a body inside.
On March 12, the medical examiner positively identified the body that was inside the vehicle as Ms. Day.
Despite having some answers, there are still many questions that the family has regarding the disappearance of the beloved mom, aunt, and grandma.
“She went to pay a bill, and we never dreamt she wouldn’t come back home. So none of us got to say bye. I mean, [she was] just gone,” explained Patti Ades who is Belva Day’s daughter.
Strong-willed and independent are two words that family members used to describe Day, though none of the family ever heard from her again after she had left to pay a bill.
Ades explained how she lives next door to her mother, and after noticing that her mom’s blinds weren’t closed one night, she sent her husband over to check on her.
“I guess it was Saturday night. I hadn’t noticed anything over at the house,” described Patti Ades. “So, he went over, and he came back over and he said ‘She’s gone, she’s not home, and the car’s not in the garage.’”
Despite it being late at night, the family sprang into action once they realized that Day was missing.
“We immediately just got in our vehicle and went out, and we started searching, here, around Mountain Home at Dollar General, Dollar Tree, you know, all the places she liked to go,” said Patti Ades.
After they called the police, they gathered friends and family and started going to businesses to try and find a glimpse of her beige Buick. Strangers and law enforcement also jumped into action by taking to the skies and waterways to look for her.
“We had a great support team. They were out there burning the roads trying to follow the camera footage and trying to figure out where she was or where she’d gone,” she said.
The family also shared that it was out of character for Day to not be at her home. She would normally run errands after lunchtime and would typically be home by 4:00 p.m.
“We had airplanes in the sky. We had helicopters in the sky from the sheriff’s department, from the state police. We had divers from Chaos Divers come down and look in areas that they figured or had a chance that they were there,” explained Brian Ades, who is Patti’s husband.
During the search, sightings of the car had been spotted through Batesville, and the family said they were shocked that she would drive that far.
“She had a routine that she followed. There’s no way. I mean she wouldn’t drive that far. It had probably been 10 years since she had driven on a highway,” described Patti Ades.
When her car was finally spotted on the Little Rock Air Force Base last week, it left the family with even more questions.
“We couldn’t wrap our heads around it. Honestly, we just, we would just shake our heads and look at each other, and wonder how did she get on the base,” said Patti Ades.
The family shared a message to other adults who may have older parents to give them a cell phone or some type of tracking option like an Apple AirTag.
“If we would have done that, we would, I mean, we had no reason to really even think this would happen. So, in hindsight, if we had put that AirTag in, we would have found her car a lot sooner, and she might still be with us,” explained Patti Ades.
Now, the family must continue to wait for the investigation to be complete.
“I wouldn’t wish this on another family to go through this. It has been extremely hard,” she added.
The Jacksonville Police Department is the lead investigating agency on the case with the Little Rock Air Force Base assisting with the investigation.
The investigation into this incident remains ongoing and we will update with more information as soon as it becomes available.
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