Brooklyn mother Toquanna Baker desperately searching for daughter Tijae Baker, missing since May 1
NEW YORK - A family is desperately searching for answers in the disappearance of young woman from Brooklyn who hasn't been seen in more than a month.
The mother of 23-year-old Tijae Baker says her daughter vanished after accepting a job offer online and traveling to another state.
Her mother has been looking for her ever since.
"My baby is out there, and traumatized and scared," Toquanna Baker told CBS2's Natalie Duddridge.
Toquanna Baker hasn't seen her daughter since May 1. She says Tijae Baker took a bus from Wortman Avenue, where she lives, to Washington, D.C. for a weekend art job.
"She just did a pop-up shop, an art pop-up shop. She's very humble. She's the sweetest person," Toquanna Baker said.
She says Tijae is an art major in college. Her artwork is posted on her Instagram page.
Toquanna Baker says Tijae was asked to go to Washington to design posters for a woman she met online, but after she boarded the bus, she said her daughter went silent, and her phone stopped ringing.
"For somebody to lure my daughter into another state. I have to deal with this, and this is going to affect my daughter's life forever," Toquanna Baker said.
She filed a police report. Crime Stoppers put out a request for information, describing Tijae as 5'7", 130 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes.
Tijae's mother also decided to make her own posters, which she has been putting up around the city as well as in the Washington area.
"I'm going through abandoned buildings, walking through alleyways," Toquanna Baker said.
She says she has been searching for her daugher herself, and obtained surveillance video that she says is Tijae pacing in a nail salon in Maryland, but when she got there, she was gone.
"We want someone to look at these cameras and get to the bottom of where she went," said Councilmember Darlene Mealy.
Tijae's story caught the attention of local councilmembers, who say they want to improve how missing persons cases are handled.
"On the missing persons bill, they don't register Black people as quickly as they do white people, so when a white person's missing, the whole world stops. When Black people are missing, 'Oh, she'll be calling back. Or she might be a partying.'"
Toquanna Baker says her daughter was in good physical and mental state and usually calls and texts her every day, and has never disappeared before.
