Chicago missing – Chicago mothers of missing children gathered on Mother’s Day urging the city for answers, sharing grief that has lasted decades.
Tears blurred the spring daylight as Chicago mother Tracey Bradley tried to imagine her daughters as they would be today—two children who, nearly 25 years after they were reported missing, remain missing.
Bradley said her daughters, Tionda and Diamond, were 10 and 3 when they were reported missing in July 2001.. Nearly a quarter-century later, she still clings to the hope that she would recognize them if she saw them again.. “I wouldn’t know how they look today. ” she said. adding that she believes “a mother has intuition” and would know that they are her children.
On Mother’s Day. many families in Chicago spent the holiday together—outside in the weather. or being cared for by loved ones.. For Bradley and several other mothers with missing persons cases, the day instead centered on unanswered questions.. The group gathered at a South Loop press conference. describing a sense of being suspended in time. where ordinary milestones come and go without certainty about what happened to their children.
Among those speaking was Karen Phillips, whose daughter, postal worker Kierra Coles, was reported missing in 2018. Phillips urged officials to give missing-persons cases more sustained attention from the city, saying Coles’s case—and others like it—deserve visibility and follow-through.
Chicago police reported that Coles. 26. was three months pregnant when she was last seen leaving her apartment near 82nd Street and Coles Avenue in South Chicago.. Phillips described the personal weight behind the public gap in information. framing the loss not only as the disappearance itself. but as the life events her daughter may have never been able to live.
Phillips said Mother’s Day is especially difficult because she had been “waiting” to see Coles experience motherhood.. She added that Coles wanted kids and would have been the last in her family to become a parent.. Phillips also recalled other pieces of her daughter’s personality—how Coles loved to dance. was interested in makeup. and had been an aspiring broadcaster.. She said her daughter offered good advice and might have been drawn to helping others in a therapeutic way.
Another speaker. La Shann Walker. described the missing of her daughter. Diamond Bynum. who was 21 when she was reported missing in 2015 from a home near Fifth Avenue and Matthews Street in Gary. Indiana.. The Northwest Indiana Major Crimes Task Force reported that Walker’s daughter was missing with her 2-year-old nephew, King Walker.
Walker said Diamond Bynum had a developmental condition called Prader-Willi syndrome. and that the family’s daily routines were shaped by Diamond’s care for others.. She described her daughter as someone who loved helping people. acting as a second mother to King by making his bottles and assisting with diaper changes.. Walker also said King was a happy toddler who often joked and laughed with his family.
For Walker, the emotional contrasts of Mother’s Day run deep.. She said she feels a “strange sense of envy” toward mothers of children who have died.. In those situations. she said there is at least a form of finality—something the mothers in her position do not have.. Without answers. she said they are left trying to hold multiple worst-case possibilities. with no certainty about whether the missing children are alive. harmed. or suffering somewhere unseen.
Walker said her group still asks basic questions that never received the closure a family is entitled to expect.. She described the uncertainty bluntly: the mothers do not know if the children are still here. or not. or if someone is harming them.. She said they “don’t know anything,” and the lack of information becomes its own kind of prolonged grief.
Bradley. Walker. and Phillips are mothers who hold a press conference on Mother’s Day every year. in part because they believe their children’s voices should not fade with time.. Bradley said she feels the responsibility of speaking for them.. “I feel like I’m their voices. ” she said. describing the pain of repeating the same public plea each year when answers remain out of reach.
The three mothers said they hope this year’s gathering is not the latest. but the last—an acknowledgment that each Mother’s Day currently comes with the same anxiety and the same hope for breakthrough information.. Their message. delivered from the South Loop press conference. was clear: as the years pass. the cases remain open in the lives of families. and their request for answers continues.
missing persons Chicago Mother’s Day vigil Kierra Coles Diamond Bynum Tracey Bradley South Loop press conference family grief