Young Mom Vanishes From Yard, Kids Found in House

A Virginia community is imploring anyone with information about the disappearance of a young mom to come forward after she vanished while getting ready to go to work Tuesday. ABC7 reports that 23-year-old TerriLynn St. John never showed up to her job that day, and when her father was notified, he went to her home in Wake and found a disturbing sight: the front door open, St. John's 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son alone inside the house, and no sign of St. John, per Maj. Michael Sampson of the Middlesex County Sheriff's Office. "You could definitely tell there [had] been a struggle beside my daughter's car," Terry St. John tells WTVR. "Jewelry was all around, like it had been broken off, her cellphone was found in the bushes." Her car was still in the driveway.

The younger St. John, last heard from around 7:30 that morning, was going to drop her kids off at day care before heading to work, Sampson says, per ABC7. Although he notes it's too soon to say if St. John was abducted, Sampson says at least four persons of interest have been questioned. "This is a missing person, under suspicious circumstances," he said Wednesday, per WTVR. St. John is described as 5-foot-6 and 130 pounds, with blond hair, blue eyes, and several tattoos, including "RJM" on her right wrist. She's believed to have last been wearing a blue Outer Banks hoodie. Wesley Moody, IDed by WRIC as the father of St. John's children, has his own theory on her disappearance. "There's no way it was just one person," he says. Meanwhile, her dad clings to hope. "Hold on, girl, we're going to find you," he says, per the Rappahannock Record. (Read about the mysterious disappearance of a CDC doctor.)