Larger text
Smaller text
Print
E-mail
Family fears for missing Forward woman
The township's police chief isn't ready to take that step, pointing to evidence that suggests Patricia McDonald, 39, is well, having gone off on her own volition.
Her relatives want only to know what happened to the mother of three whom they've not seen since early Sunday.
"I'm a basket case," Daniel Conley, McDonald's common law husband, said Thursday.
Conley, 48, said McDonald left her home at the 51 Estates mobile home park around 1:15 a.m. Sunday in her red pickup truck to drop off keys at her workplace, the Fair Oaks Nursing Home in Dormont.
Conley said he called McDonald on her cell phone because he was worried about her traveling alone. McDonald told him around 2:30 a.m. that she'd been pulled over by police near Large Auto Sales on Route 51 in Forward, Conley said. He said he called 10 to 15 minutes later, but got no answer.
The woman's daughter, Amber McDonald, 19 -- due to deliver her first child Dec. 18 -- said her mother had not disappeared before.
"She'll go out for a couple hours, but if she's going to be longer, she'll call," Amber McDonald said.
Forward police Chief Thomas Staley said Patricia McDonald had gone missing before, but for a shorter time -- about eight hours.
Cell phone records indicate she wasn't near Large Auto Sales at the time she spoke with her husband, Staley said. No one at the nursing home saw her there Sunday morning. Police along the Route 51 corridor say they did not pull over McDonald.
Staley also said someone has been checking McDonald's cell phone voice mail, but no one answers the phone.
"I don't know exactly what we're dealing with," he said. "Circumstances I can't get into make me believe she will come back sooner or later."
The woman's relatives think she might have been pulled over by someone impersonating a police officer. They want Forward police to bring the FBI into the case.
Staley said he's treating McDonald's disappearance as a missing persons case. Local police have been alerted to be on the lookout for her 1997 Dodge Ram 4-by-4 pickup.
Staley said he has had no reports of police impersonators in the area. Other incidents involving phony cops have occurred in Moon and Connellsville, Fayette County.
Patricia McDonald has two other children: Shawn Conley, 8 and Ryan Conley, 6.
Her truck's license plate number is YRL-9861. Anyone with information about McDonald should contact Forward police at 724-258-7985.
More Pittsburgh, Allegheny headlines
- CCAC approves three-year contract
- Transportation planners outline pitch for projects in 10 counties
- Rankin Bridge traffic to shift tomorrow
- City's Men of Excellence honored
- Mon Incline will close this weekend
- County races have share of squeakers
- Allegheny health department not sweating lack of flu vaccine
- Ravenstahl wins every ward with slimmest victory to date
