Billboard highlights plight of missing Paterson mother

NEWARK — The parents of a 25-year-old Paterson woman who has been missing since her suspected abduction two months ago stood in prayer as her face flashed across a highway billboard in New Jersey’s largest city on Friday morning.

“Have you seen her?” asked the message above Shanaya Coley’s picture.

The billboard represents the latest efforts by Coley’s family and their supporters to find the young mother whom authorities classified as missing since Dec. 5, when someone drove off in her grey Nissan Altima, leaving behind her eyeglasses and bloodstains on the pavement of a Paterson apartment complex where she lived.

“Hope, I have never lost my hope and my faith,” said Coley’s mother, Rachel Martin, gazing at the billboard.

“As long as I don’t get a call from the coroner’s office or anything like that, then she’s still alive and around somewhere,” said her father, Willie Coley.

Coley’s family said they have not heard anything from police about possible leads in finding her. They are hoping the billboard, which they said is being provided for free by the advertising company, Clear Channel Outdoor, will produce information that turns her up.

Martin praised community members and elected officials who have supported her, including former school board member, Lilisa Mimms, who made the arrangements for the billboard on McCarter Highway, also known as Route 21, in the northern part of Newark.

Mimms said Clear Channel had agreed to post the electronic message about Coley on both sides of the billboard for the next three weeks. She said the family has established a GoFundMe account that has generated a $6,000 reward.

Coley was on her way to work at a heath care facility when she apparently was abducted, according to family members.

“My baby, my child, my life,” Martin said her missing daughter. “My heart has been dead since I got that phone call.”

The missing woman’s son, Amir, turned 4 years old three weeks after the alleged abduction. The boy is staying this week with relatives in North Carolina. He and his mother had been living with his grandfather in the Brooks-Sloat Terrace apartment at the time she went missing.

Family members have tried their best to keep the severity of situation from the child. “I try to keep him playing and happy,” the boy’s grandfather said.

Authorities are asking anyone with information on Coley’s disappearance to call 973-523-8477 (TIPS). The license plate number of her car is R74-HRX.

“Paterson Police has not wavered in our effort to find Shanaya,” said deputy police chief Heriberto “Eddie” Rodriguez.

The deputy chief said Paterson is working with the FBI, New Jersey State Police, and the Passaic County Proscecutor’s Office, as well as neighboring local police agencies, on the case. Rodriguez called the billboard “a great effort” in the search.