— The family of a Chicago woman who went missing in the Bahamas is pleading with the US government for more help.
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Taylor Casey, 41, was last seen at a yoga retreat on Paradise Island on June 19.
“A young woman called me and said, ‘Have you heard from Taylor?’ and I looked at my phone because it was a woman from the yoga retreat,” Taylor’s mother, Collette Seymour, said. “Then she said Taylor hadn’t shown up to yoga class.”
Casey’s mother visited the facility last week and described the visit as “deeply disturbing.”
She said she had to beg to speak to students at the retreat, and that students felt like they were being “instructed on what to say and what not to say.”
Her mother said she hadn’t seen any missing persons posters.
Authorities said they had spoken to “a lot of people” and deployed drones, divers and rescue dogs, but the mother said she felt they were doing the bare minimum.
“Without the assistance of the U.S. government, we may never know what happened to my Taylor.”
Police found Casey’s cell phone in the ocean last week, but her family says authorities are refusing to hand it over to them.
Also see | Chicago woman’s cell phone found one week after she went missing on Paradise Island in the Bahamas
“We love Taylor and she needs to come home with her family,” her mother said.
Family members said Taylor would never “run away” without a word.
Police asked yoga retreat attendees for statements about Taylor but did not say whether they had been questioned.
Police reportedly refused to tell the family team how many statements they had collected or the names of those who had taken part in those statements.
Ram Soskin, lead manager of the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat, said that on the Monday before Casey disappeared, an unidentified man was seen carrying a walkie-talkie walking across the same platform where Taylor’s tent was located.
Related | Family of missing Chicago woman Taylor Casey joins search effort in Bahamas
One of the retreat attendees spoken to by the Taylor Casey search team said that on the day Casey was last seen, he was sitting alone on the beach when a stranger approached him.
The man, dressed in all black and wearing a Celtics cap, claimed to be from Chicago and was interested in yoga classes, and followed Taylor Casey onto the property, according to a website set up to search for her.
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