Jolissa Fuentes: Missing California woman's parents 'heartbroken' by slow progress of investigation
SELMA, CALIFORNIA: The family of Jolissa Fuentes, who went missing on August 7, says they are "heartbroken" by the lack of information about the search for their daughter and what seems to be little media coverage of the case compared to other missing person cases.
Police Chief Rudy Alcaraz told Fox News Digital on Friday that they have a video of Fuentes driving by herself after the time she was last seen with a friend at an AM/PM gas station in Selma, California, on Sunday, August 7. Initially, Selma police claimed the 22-year-old was last seen there around 4 am on that day.
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"We picked her up on camera after that. However, we’re not going to relinquish that information, as we…have to kind of consider all avenues," he stated. "Right now, there’s nothing that is insinuating foul play, but, again, we don’t have much information."
Together with the Fresno Sheriff's Office, the Selma Police Department is utilizing some of its resources, including helicopters, to help with the search. Alcaraz and the Fuentes family claim that federal law enforcement officers are also involved. However, in the two weeks since the 22-year-old went missing, they haven't gotten any concrete information about her whereabouts.
Her family believes she drove out to a rural area east of Selma with orchards and vineyards to clear her head after one of her best friends died last year. She had returned home from a party and stopped at her grandmother's house to pick up some cash and a bag before going to the AM/PM. Jolissa has not contacted anyone or picked up her phone since she was last seen, which is unusual for her. Currently, police are searching the areas of Pine Flat Lake and Avocado Lake, according to Alcaraz.
They "don't come back until dark," Jolissa's mother Norma Nunez explained over the phone as she and her husband looked for their daughter. "What I don’t understand is, if you’ve got all these resources and other agencies involved — police say the FBI is getting involved — we should have something. These are some of our top, trained agencies in the United States, supposedly," Joey Fuentes stated."We’re doing all we can do. We don’t know what to do," he continued, adding that he and his wife are trying to do everything they can to find their daughter without compromising law enforcement’s investigation into the case.
Praising the family's efforts in searching for their daughter, Alcaraz said, "The family’s done a wonderful job of putting information out about Jolissa. We are working with all of our state, local and federal agencies to try to get the best information and have done pretty much everything we can think of or has been suggested to us…to try and find Jolissa. We’re just hoping for more information that will lead us to her." He added, "Selma Police Department is unlikely to issue any new press releases on social media until there is a significant update in the case, as they do not want to oversaturate the page to the point where people lose interest in Jolissa's disappearance."
"We want to make sure that if we put something out, it’s because we have something new and a different direction to go in and more information," he stated.
Fuentes drives a silver 2011 Hyundai Accent with the license plate 8MPU766 from California. A $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the 22-year-old's whereabouts. Nunez and her husband have also set up a GoFundMe page called 'Bring Jolissa Home Safe' in order to raise funds for their search and possibly a private investigator.