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The original was posted on /r/unresolvedmysteries by /u/walkingonfirex on 2024-01-22 19:37:37+00:00.

Since my write-up about the Poinsett County John Doe, I’ve been wanting to bring some attention to other cases of missing children in Arkansas. There are some cold cases being brought to the fold by Catherine Townsend’s Hell and Gone podcast, but these are typically murders. As a lifelong Arkansan, I did not know that we have so many missing people, but especially missing children. I’m not expecting to change the world, but I don’t want these kids forgotten. Anyway, I’m starting with a teenage girl, missing for nearly 18 years.

On November 18, 2006, 15-year-old April Dawn Andrews left her King Lane apartment in Pea Ridge, Arkansas. She told her mother that she was going to walk to the Pea Ridge Church of the Nazarene, which was just down the street, and giving away clothes. “Around 5 or 6 o’clock that evening, April’s mother, Tina, called the Pea Ridge Police Department and reported her daughter missing” (Jones). An eyewitness claimed that April had spoken to a man behind the wheel of a beat-up, brown truck, and then climbed into the passenger seat. The truck continued southbound and April has not been seen since.The first officer at the scene, Cerilla Doyle, went missing herself two years later. Her remains were discovered in May 2018 in Mason City, Iowa, over 500 miles away from Pea Ridge. Her death was ruled a suicide (though her family is skeptical), and you can read about her case here. Police believe that there is no connection between the deaths, but I’m not convinced one way or another.For three years, Pea Ridge officials classified April as an endangered runaway. After, the case was handed over to the Benton County Sheriff’s Department, but there have been no developments beyond an anonymous tip that investigators should look into a pond. They drained the pond in Little Flock in Benton County but found nothing.

April’s family was quite impoverished; she had five full siblings and five half-siblings, and her mother did not work. As April and several of her siblings had learning disabilities, the family relied on government assistance for the disabilities, and survivor benefits after her father passed away in 2004. Her family could not afford a phone and did not have a car. Due to her disability, April was shy and was often bullied at school, leading to poor attendance. Her functioning was on the level of that of a ten-year-old, so the Pea Ridge police’s theory that she’d run away due to her family’s poverty and fear of being a burden doesn’t hold much water. She did not have many friends, either. April’s older half-sister, Tonya, also disagrees. “She’s not the type of person who’s going to jump in a car with somebody she doesn’t know. She was shy and really timid around strangers.” Strangely, Tonya did not learn of her sister’s disappearance until a year later. She claims she was never told.

The eyewitness was one of April’s friends who also lived in the apartment complex. She was an eight-year-old girl and was able to describe the truck in detail. She and April had walked to a nearby Dollar General together. “They returned around noon or a little before, and each went to her own apartment. The friend was outside playing and saw April get into the brown truck. The witness gave a detailed description of the truck. It was an older model, brown, beat-up, full-size, single-cab pickup. The sheriff’s office checked the registrations on all vehicles in Benton County matching the description” (Jones).” Lt. Hunter Petray is the lead detective on the case currently and said about the truck, “There was one individual, who lived in the apartment complex,. An older male who had a brown truck similar to what the witness described in the report. We’ve narrowed the truck down.” He could not disclose any more details. Petray also said that there are many leads to follow. “It’s a low-rent apartment complex [with] a lot of turnover. There were a number of felons and a number of sex offenders who lived there.” Despite the investigation into the truck, LE is not completely certain that she did ever get into the truck.

I have no theories about what could have happened, but with poverty so common in the state overall, I don’t necessarily think that her mother had anything to do with the disappearance, as some have speculated. April’s sister, Tonya, was suspicious of one of April’s mother’s boyfriends, but Lt. Petray claims that he was not living in the area at the time of the abduction. I do have to wonder if April knew her kidnapper (if the eyewitness account is accurate; I’m not saying the little friend lied, but I am saying that eyewitnesses are not always reliable, and her being a child adds to that) since she was so shy and meek. I don’t see her talking to a stranger and willingly going with one. And with Pea Ridge only having a population of a little over 7,000, I do believe that it is possible. There have been some reported sightings of her in Northwest Arkansas, but nothing has ever come to fruition.Thank you so much for reading. I hope that one day we learn what happened to April. I unfortunately do not believe she is alive, but it’s not totally impossible.

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