Missing teen returns home after eight days

When her daughter went missing for eight days, all Cynthilia Joseph of Vermont could do was constantly pray to God for her safe return. Her prayers did not go unanswered.{{more}}

Joseph said that she realized that her 13-year-old daughter Nickeisha Williams was missing at around 6 a.m. on Tuesday, October 23, the time she normally wakes up to get ready for school.

“I was awakened by the sounds of the opening of the gate and the dogs around 4 a.m. on Tuesday. I went to her room to check on her, but it was locked. I went back at 6’o clock … and discovered that she was not in her room,” Joseph related to SEARCHLIGHT on Wednesday.

Joseph said she then informed the police and the principal of her daughter’s school and began praying and asking God for her safe return. Joseph said that around 12:00 a.m. on Tuesday, October 30, she got a call from a woman telling her that she had her daughter and that she was safe.

Nickeisha told SEARCHLIGHT that she was taken from her home by car, with her consent, at about 4 a.m. by two persons she knows. One of the persons is an adult, the other a child. She had agreed to go with them the evening before, to get away from certain problems she said she was having.

Nickeisha said when she arrived at her friends’ home, she was told not to go outside or anywhere in the yard where persons could see her. The girl told Searchlight that the windows and doors of the house she was taken to were secured with burglar bars, which remained locked for the entire time she was there. She said that while she was at the house, her elder friend did not go to work, but stayed at home with her.

On one occasion, she said, one of the children stayed at home with her.

Nickeisha said she doesn’t know where the house is located, as she had never been there before.

Then, on the evening of Monday, October 29, SVG TV carried a story that Nickeisha was missing. “I was upstairs playing with one of the person’s daughters when they came upstairs and said, “I saw your photo on the television … what is going on?’ I told her I do not know,” the girl recounted.

According to the girl, at around 10 p.m. that night, the adult told her that she needed to get home to her parents. The adult walked her to Penniston where a man took her to another lady who contacted her mother.

“I wasn’t scared at first. The person was talking to me normal, but I got scared when they told me that I have to go home around 10 p.m. that night,” she recalled.

“I have made a mistake in my life and am sorry to my mother for walking out on her. I just want to say to my friends that while out there, it was strange and hard and do not follow in my footstep,” was the advice that Nickeisha had to give to other persons who are thinking about doing the same thing.

“I just want to let the enemy know that there is a god and in him do I put my trust,” was what the Nickeisha’s mother had to say about what happened.