LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – An Indiana family is searching for a family member they believe has been homeless in the Las Vegas Valley for years.
A valley nonprofit says dozens of other families are in similar positions.
Jessica, who only wanted to use her first name, has been looking for her brother Dajuan Sechrest, who goes by “Snoop,” since Dec. 2021.
In the last three years, she says she’s made dozens of posts on social media, nine trips to Las Vegas, and called emergency rooms, Metro police, and even the Clark County coroner.
“It’s terrifying, not knowing. There’s just this big huge empty feeling in your heart. It never goes away, you’re constantly thinking about it,” Jessica says.
Shine A Light, a nonprofit that helps people living in the underground flood channels, says about a dozen people in similar positions as Jessica reach out to them for help every week.
“Unfortunately if they’re out of state, they’re far away, they don’t know. It’s just ‘I heard here, I heard this,” Shine A Light Outreach Director Robert Banghart says.
He says with limited information, all they can do is send a photo and description out to their team, and tell them to keep an eye out.
If the family has information about where the person was last seen, he says a team will go to that location to speak with people and hang up flyers.
For Banghart, this mission is personal. He says he was homeless himself, and his family made trips to Las Vegas in an effort to find him.
“They were trying to find me, and I had bumped into people,” he says. “It was so overwhelming, the shame, that I was just like ‘I got to get out of here.’”
He says at that point, he wasn’t ready to be found. As for Jessica, she says if her brother isn’t ready to come home, that’s okay.
“We just want some form of contact, to let us know he’s alive and he’s okay,” she says.
Shine A Light’s primary mission is homeless outreach, and guiding people through the resources available in the valley, but Banghart says they do try to connect people with their families when asked.
As for Jessica, she and friends and family have a trip planned to Las Vegas in December to continue their search for “Snoop.”
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