The sister of a missing Florida woman says she has taken it upon herself to get permission to search a wooded property near where the missing woman was last seen.
As CrimeOnline reported, Sara Ebersole was reported missing on March 8. She was seen getting into a black pickup truck at a Circle K on March 2. The truck was driven by James Robinson, who drove her to a house in Reddick where he lives with two other people, WUFT reported.
The next day, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said, she left the house in a blue sedan driven by a Hispanic man in his 30s who was believed to be an Uber driver. Deputies found no records of an Uber ride booked by Ebersole on that day but are investigating to see if it might have been an “off the books” ride.
Family members said Ebersole was known to be out of contact for weeks at a time, but this disappearance has not been the norm.
“She has stopped posting to social media. She has stopped going to work. Her accounts have not been used,” sheriff’s office spokesperson Valerie Strong said earlier this month. “Everything that she would normally do even in the times that she did go disappear for those weeks has all stopped.”
Michelle Tullis, Ebersole’s sister, told WTVT that she contacted the new owner of the wooded property near the house in Reddick where she was last seen, and the owner gave her permission to search.
“I felt like if I had to reach out and identify the property owner and get permission myself, then I need to go out myself because they obviously were in no rush to do it themselves,” she said, referring to Marion County deputies, who told WTVT they were exhausting all options.
Marion County Search and Rescue, a non-profit, all-volunteer organization not affiliated with the sheriff’s office, is expected to search the property next week with cadaver dogs, the station said.
Tullis said she personally searched over an acre of the property.
When she was last seen in March, Ebersole was wearing a tan shirt with sequins or a black faded hoodie with a logo of a hockey goalie and the words “Goalie Academy” on the front.
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[Featured image: The Marion County Sheriff’s Office says this photo of Sara Ebersole was taken the day she disappeared]
