ROANOKE, Va. – Nearly five years after her disappearance, people are still asking: Where is Arieanna Day?
Roanoke Police say Arieanna was last seen in 2018 when she was only three months old.
A vigil was held Saturday night in Roanoke for Arieanna and other cold case victims.
Leah Ficklin is an advocate for Arieanna and drove nearly eight hours from Indiana to show her support.
“We won’t give up. We will search,” Ficklin said. “We will search, we’ll be detectives, we will pray, protest, we’ll do whatever we can to try to see what happened to this innocent baby that doesn’t have a voice.”
Mallory Thornton is also an advocate from North Carolina and has followed this case since the beginning. She says the vigil is another way of keeping Arieanna’s story alive.
“Even if it’s another five years, I’m going to continue to push and push and make sure her name stays out there,” Thornton said.
Thornton hired Roanoke-based private investigator Jemarh Fuell back in February.
“This right here is just hoping that a family member will see this and know that that’s their cousin, niece, grandbaby and maybe there’s something the dad or the mom has shared with someone in the family that will help out with the case,” Fuell said.
Fuell says its encouraging to see the support even five years later.
“Sometimes things just quietly go away, you know,” he said. “You never hear about it again, so seeing that she still has the support.”
Ficklin says she is so invested because Arieanna did not have a voice to use herself.
“This baby, as Mallory has been saying needs somebody to speak for her, needs somebody to advocate for her,” Ficklin said.
Thornton wants to continue to gain support, and eventually find the answers they’re looking for.
“I feel like it’s impossible for anybody not to care,” Thornton said. “Everybody should be out here.”
