WTOC, Savannah, Georgia, news, weather and sports | FBI looks for missing Savannah mother and child

FBI looks for missing Savannah mother and child

By Lynda Figueredo - email

SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) - The search continues for a missing Savannah woman and her three-year-old daughter.

Ronkeya Holmes was in Florida trying to pick up her daughter Masaraha from the child's father, when the two vanished. Now the FBI is looking into the case.

It has been two weeks since the single mother and college student has been seen.

She was living in an apartment on Robinson Circle in Savannah with her mother at the time of her disappearance.

The phone calls keep coming in as family and friends try to figure out what happened to 29-year-old Ronkeya Holmes and her three-year-old daughter Masaraha Ross.

"It's just hard knowing that you have spent two weeks without her, not knowing anything. Where she is or how she is doing," said Ronkeyas mother Edith Fletcher.

Fletcher says her daughter Ronkeya let Masaraha stay at her fathers Winter Haven home in Florida, while she went to classes at Savannah Technical College.

As the time grew near for Ronkeya to pick up her daughter from the child's father Lester Ross, something didn't seem right.

"She would call and say let me talk to Masaraha or I am going to come get her," said Fletcher. "He always would say she is asleep or out of town. Months went by and I told her to just go and get her and when she got there he wouldn't give her to her."

Ronkeya filed a police report with the Winter Haven police and headed home to Savannah. One week later, on October 18, 2009, Ronkeya returned to Florida where she was supposed to meet Lester at the Haines City walmart to take her daughter home.

The two haven't been seen since.

Fletcher believes that exchange never happened.

"Last time I talked to him (Lester), he said I promise I took her to walmart," said Fletcher. 'The surveillance cameras don't show them no where."

Lester's cousin, Joseph Wilcox, was found driving Ronkeyas blue Ford Escort later that night.

Inside investigators found Ronkeyas luggage on the front seat, her college badge hanging from the rear view mirror and several children's items in the back seat.

"I think they planted it in there to cover it up," said Fletcher.

Two weeks have passed and still no sign of Ronkeya or her daughter.

Fletcher says she is waiting by the phone hoping something will turn up. "I'm ready for that call but I don't want to get that call."

Investigators say they are getting conflicting stories from those involved, and Wilcox and Ross are no longer communicating with authorities.

Investigators say the mother and daughter are considered "endangered."

The family plans on returning to Florida tomorrow where they will begin canvassing several neighborhoods in search of the mother and her child.

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