For many individuals worldwide, Valentine’s Day is supposed to be about Love. It includes flowers, chocolates and various expressions of Love.
For one Fallston family, this day marks a painful nightmare. The day 9 year old Asha Degree disappeared.
The night before she disappeared, she was happy with the candy from her grandmother for valentine’s day.
What made Asha Degree leave her house and run away? Was she afraid ? or was it her plan to do that? Let’s find out the facts of this case but first, have a look at her early life and who she is.
About Asha Degree
Asha Degree was born in 1990 on Aug. 5. Her parents Harold and Iquilla Degree were so happy as she was their second child and the first girl in the family.
The happy couple named their daughter “Asha Jauqilla Degree,” and they got married in 1998 on valentine.
Both her parents were workaholic people, and they let their children be in the school in their absence.
Both the kid’s life only revolves around the school, church, and their grandparent’s house. Asha Degree and her brother mostly stay at their grandparent’s house for three to two days.
Asha Degree was a delighted child and a star performer in basketball at her school. But the sad part came when she lost her first season game, and she was upset a day before she disappeared.
Now, the question is how did she disappear when she was happy? And she was just upset a little because she lost her game.
Was this the reason for her to leave the house?
What exactly happened that day when she lost her first season game of basketball?
Asha Degree disappeared from her Shelby, North Carolina, home before dawn on Valentine’s Day in 2000. Her parents had taken her to bed without problem that night.
After midnight, when a close-by guard left the family’s neighborhood without power, Asha’s dad went to keep an eye on her and tracked down her if she was sleeping.
The incident that happened left nearby police and the FBI in trouble. Asha gave space to her and her sibling, O’Bryant. He told agents he heard her bed noise in the evening; however, he also believed that Asha was moving in the evening.
After packing her dark rucksack with a T-shirt and school books, Asha went outside and walked into the rainy evening. Two drivers revealed seeing her in favor of North Carolina Highway 18 around 4 a.m.
One even turned around to check whether she was alright. However, Asha ran off into the forest. She has never been seen again.
In an interview investigation, her mother said:
“Following 20 years, I actually accept my girl is alive,” Iquilla Degree said in 2020. “I don’t accept she is dead. What’s more, I realize somebody knows something. I’m not insane enough to feel that a nine-year-old can vanish like a phantom without someone knowing something.”
Asha’s mom later clarified that her girl was a knowledgeable young lady. She moved on with a productive life as a fourth-grader and appreciated family trips to church.
She was careful about outsiders and wouldn’t love the neighborhood canines. She also told the investigators that Asha and her sibling had gotten into bed at 8 p.m.
Sooner or later among them, at that point, and 6:30 a.m., Asha Degree disappeared. Iquilla found her daughter missing when she went to inform Asha and her sibling about school.
The family immediately informed the Shelby Police Department, which observed no evidence of a restrained section. Police noted Asha had taken her bookbag with her.
Examiners accepted their first leads in the early evening after canine units neglected to track down a solitary fragrance trail to follow.
Two people called the station saying they had seen a young lady coordinating with Asha’s depiction on Highway 18 around 4 a.m.
Police and the fbi can’t find any hopeful leads
The very next day, police found Asha Degree’s hair bow in a close-by woodshed. They went through the following seven days and 9,000 worker hours looking through a two-by-three-mile region and found nothing.
They furthermore reached through 300 hints, none of which worked out. Luckily, the FBI and North Carolina’s State Bureau of Investigation held hands to assist with tracking down the missing young lady and progressed, leading their journey.
In the meantime, the Degree family trusted appearances on The Montel Williams Show would help, while the public news and, surprisingly, The Oprah Winfrey Show broadcasted the case.
It took over 18 months for the following hint to be found. Development laborers revealed Asha’s backpack on Aug. 3, 2001, while investigating a frontage road in Burke County 30 miles away.
It held a New Kids On The Block T-shirt and a duplicate of Dr. Seuss’ McElligot’s Pool. While the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office noticed that the book had been settled up with Asha’s primary school library, the disclosure of the backpack didn’t create any new leads.
The following data for the situation didn’t come until 2004 when a jail detainee guaranteed she had been killed and knew where she had been covered. Examiners followed up just to find the person staying at the site.
Asha degree’s parents tried to increase awareness and didn’t give up
The Degree family coordinated a yearly stroll from their home to a missing person notice to keep nearby mindfulness alive with hopeful leads. They even settled a donation in her name.
Iquilla Degree told North Carolina’s WBTV:
“This is more awful than death on the grounds that, essentially with death, you have conclusion,”
“You can go to a gravesite, or then again on the off chance that you have the urn at home, yet for our purposes, we can’t grieve, we can’t surrender. The main thing we got is trust.”
Things moved in 2015 when an insider confessed to seeing a youngster enter a green Ford Thunderbird or Lincoln Mark IV the night Asha Degree vanished.
The FBI returned its examination, reporting that specific lead in 2016 and delivering pictures of Asha’s backpack things in 2018.
Tips keep on running in. In 2020, one more detainee at a North Carolina state remedial office reached The Shelby Star, saying he had heard somebody looking at killing and covering her.
Investigators talked with him and another detainee but indeed turned up no new data.
“You take all data got incredibly genuine, and we run it to the end paying little heed to who gives that data,” Cleveland County Sheriff Alan Norman said.
Where Is Asha Degree now? Is she alive or dead?
Cleveland County investigator “Tim Adams” actually accepts that somebody might be listening who might have data that will help Asha.
“The way that it was a little kid that left on Valentine’s Day truly got everyone’s heart locally. She’s been called Shelby’s Sweetheart since she’s a youngster that is one of our own,” he said.
Despite the FBI, neighborhood police, and State Bureau of Investigation working as a team with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there are no authoritative replies regarding Asha’s destiny.
As of now, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children delivered carefully age-handled photographs of what Asha may resemble as a 30-year-elderly person today.
The way things are, the FBI is offering a $25,000 award for data indicating her place. The Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office is offering another $20,000. For Asha Degree’s parents, the expectation is that those careful haven’t done unsalvageable harm and dare to approach.
“That is my supplication consistently, that God will get into their heart and allow them to approach since it must be a load on them,” Iquilla Degree said in 2020. “We’re trusting, and we’re supplicating that she’s had a primarily fair life even though we didn’t raise her. She was nine years of age, and she’ll be 30 this year.
“So we’ve missed everything. Be that as it may, I couldn’t care less. In the event that she strolled in the entryway at the present time, I wouldn’t really mind what I missed. All I need is to see her.”
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