A young mother has disappeared months after witnessing her acquaintance be murdered in a plot that she was the target of.
Deundrea L. Ford mysteriously vanished on September 21st after getting into a van outside of her job, Diva’s Bikini Sports Bar & Grill. Ford was reportedly seen entering the vehicle with an unknown male around 1:00 a.m. An hour later, around 2:00 a.m., the 21-year-old phoned a friend, but that individual missed her call. The following day, her loved ones discovered her phone had been turned off. She has not been seen or heard from since. What makes the mystery even more troubling is that Ford was the target of a May robbery gone wrong, and the conspirators seemed determined to harm her.
On May 18th, Ford was in the front passenger of a car being driven by associate Otis Parker. He had recently driven Ford and her friend Quitiana Taylor to Lousiana to dance and escort. However, Taylor hatched a plan with Jamal Brown, Mariah Green, and Jarrell Wheeler to rob Ford of the $1,500 they’d made during their work trip. Brown shot at the car being driven by Parker, killing him and narrowly missing Ford. Since then, Brown has been killed in a shootout with police. The remaining defendants have since been arrested, but authorities have uncovered several text messages outlining their plans to harm Ford, stating that she was no longer safe in Houston. Ford was granted a restraining order against her conspirators, and it’s unclear if they could set her up from behind bars.
Police have not identified the man Ford got into the van with outside her job. However, surveillance video from Diva’s does confirm that he sat in the parking lot for at least an hour before leaving. Now, her family is pleading for answers.
“I just hope she’s alive,” her grandmother, Bridgette Carriere, told ABC 13.
