Abby Connolly
In 2017, a young woman left her grandmother’s house to meet up with a few high school friends and expected to be home in about an hour. But after waving goodbye to her grandmother before leaving, she never returned home.
Abby Lynn Patterson was 20-years-old on September 5th, 2017, the afternoon she was supposed to see some friends. That morning, she was spending time at her grandmother’s house in Lumberton, North Carolina. Around 11:30 a.m., she told her grandmother and texted her mom, whom she was very close with, that she had plans to meet up with a few friends from high school.
Reports say that Abby previously lived in Jacksonville, Florida, but moved back to her hometown of Lumberton to live with her family after spending time in a drug rehabilitation facility.
When Abby texted her mom about her plans with her friends, she said she’d return home in an hour.
Her grandmother’s neighbors claimed to have seen Abby leave her grandmother’s home on East 9th Street and walk towards Inglewood Street before getting into a brown Buick that was parked on the side of the street.
When 6:00 p.m. rolled around the day she left, and Abby’s mom hadn’t heard from her, she grew very concerned, as she claimed Abby wasn’t the type to ignore texts or calls from family. That’s when she decided to file a missing person’s report with the Lumberton Police Department.
Once police learned Abby had gotten into a brown Buick, they tracked down the car and discovered it belonged to one of Abby’s friends. He told the police he had allegedly dropped Abby off at a location that had not been disclosed.
Since then, no one has seen or heard from Abby, and her family is sadly coming up on the sixth anniversary of her disappearance with no answers or major pieces of evidence that point to what happened to her.
There is some suspicion that Abby’s disappearance may be linked to a tragic discovery just outside of Lumberton a few months prior, where three young women were found dead within a four-block radius of the town. However, the police do not believe the cases are related or connected.
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