A northwest Indiana family is pleading with the public for help in finding a missing pregnant woman who is believed to have given birth by now. NBC Chicago’s Jenn Schanz reports.
A northwest Indiana family is pleading with the public for help in finding a missing pregnant woman who is believed to have given birth by now.
Emma Baum, 25, was last seen on Oct. 10 near the intersection of 25th Avenue and Connecticut Street in Gary.
Baum's family said Emma was at a boyfriend's house that day and was not heard from after that. Her family said she did not have a working phone with her when she went missing.
Baum, who is already a mother to three young children, was nine months pregnant when she was last seen.
"My sister is beautiful. She's energetic. She reaches for the sky just like a sunflower, which is her favorite," Baum's sister Abby Smith said.
Gary police told NBC Chicago they received a missing persons report on Oct. 28, well over two weeks after Baum was last seen.
Police have searched three areas and conducted several interviews, though no arrests have been made.
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"One individual was picked up on a warrant," Gary Police commander Jack Hamady said. The individual, Baum's boyfriend, is currently in custody on a separate matter and has not been charged in connection to Baum's disappearance.
Baum's family suspects he may know something regarding her whereabouts.
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"We have put our own lives at risk. We have ran into abandoned houses, we have dug in dirt piles," Smith said.
Baum's family is pushing for more resources to be deployed in the search effort.
According to Hamady, there are license plate reading cameras and gunshot detection technology, but no police observation device cameras, or POD cameras, in the area Baum was last seen in.
A group of volunteers with Team NWI Independent Search Team donated their time in the effort to find Baum.
The group's founders had previously searched for their son Michael Hernandez, who went missing for 41 days in 2015 before his body was discovered.
“We’re just going to go through a rough area, a place we have not covered yet. And hopefully we’ll be able to find something," Lorenzo Longoria of Team NWI said. The group deployed canines in the region Friday.
Baum is approximately 5 feet and 3 inches tall, weighs around 136 pounds and has brown hair and brown eyes.
According to the missing persons report, Baum has several scars and tattoos and often wears colorful wigs.
Though police do not believe the cases to be related, Baum's disappearance has renewed attention into the August disappearance of 13-year-old Ja'Niyah McMichael.
McMichael was last seen on Aug. 11, with federal authorities assisting Gary police in the case.
Baum's family is praying their loved one returns in time to spend Thanksgiving with her children.
"We will do anything to keep you safe, to get you back," Smith said.
"I would like my daughter home. We miss her," Jamie Baum, Emma's mother, said.
Anyone with information on either case should contact Gary police at 219-881-1209.
