Just like Gabby Petito, a 20-year-old Indiana woman has also disappeared in early November after traveling to California, where she used a stranger’s cell phone to call her mother before going missing.
On November 1, Lateche Norris traveled to Santa Cruz to see her boyfriend, Joseph “Joey” Smith, her mother, Cheryl Walker, wrote on Facebook. Lateche was last seen in San Diego on the fourth of November and last contacted her mother on the fifth of November, reporting that she got into a fight with her boyfriend.
During the Nov. 5 distressing phone call, Lateche told her mother about the fight and said she’d call again; Walker told KRON-TV. She said her daughter didn’t tell her why she used a stranger’s phone instead of her own.
Walker, however, said that was the last time she heard from her daughter – and that the girl’s boyfriend can no longer be reached since then. In an effort to find her daughter, Walker has since launched a social media campaign that has attracted widespread media attention.
“My daughter is just as important as Gabby Petito,” Walker wrote on Facebook. “As if what happened to that sweet girl wasn’t heartbreaking enough.”
Gabby Petito’s case captured national headlines for months after she vanished during a road trip with her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, in August. Weeks after her disappearance, Gabby was found dead in Wyoming, while a nationwide manhunt ensued for her boyfriend. Brian was also found dead in Florida from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in October.
Walker also criticized the San Diego Police Department (SDPD), claiming that police told her that the young girl is not believed to be at risk.
The SDPD “chose to ignore the red flags, and try to push a narrative that ‘we see this all the time,'” Walker wrote.
