When the first report came in Saturday that a 21-year-old Illinois State University student was missing, local police were not particularly alarmed.
In a university town, police receive a dozen such reports every year. And until now, every missing persons case ended with the subject returning safely, often from an impromptu weekend away with friends, Normal Police Lt. Mark Kotte said Thursday.
“We had no reason to assume differently,” Kotte said. “Students miss class. Students miss work. People do that all the time.”
But this one has proved to be different, and for the first time in more than a decade, Normal police are conducting an all-out hunt for an ISU student–Olamide Adeyooye, a gregarious laboratory sciences major from west suburban Berkeley–and a criminal investigation into who is responsible for her disappearance.
“We have persons of interest, not suspects, but persons of interest, so we’re looking at them,” Kotte said, declining to elaborate.
The department obtained several subpoenas to get Adeyooye’s financial and telephone records on Thursday. Kotte called the move standard in a criminal investigation, which this case officially became Wednesday after authorities discovered some of Adeyooye’s possessions scattered in the thick underbrush that separates railroad tracks from a parking lot several blocks from her off-campus apartment.
“In any type of criminal investigation, you want to see who they’ve called, you want to see financial records,” Kotte said.
Police still do not know what happened to Adeyooye, nor have they located her car, a green 1996 Toyota Corolla with Illinois license number LBG 927.
The last known contact with Adeyooye was on the evening of Oct. 13 when her boyfriend, who plays guitar for an indie rock band and was out of state for a concert, spoke with her on her cell phone as she browsed for movies at a Family Video. She told him she planned to stay in that night.
But when Adeyooye failed to show up for her laboratory science classes on Friday or to her job waiting tables at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant, her friends and family became concerned.
Normal police entered Adeyooye’s locked apartment Saturday and found the television, lights and a fan on and food in the microwave. Adeyooye’s cell phone was on the couch.
Kotte said the scene in the apartment did not necessarily raise officers’ suspicions. Many people leave a television or radio on when they are not home to dissuade burglars, he said.
But as the days have gone by, the disappearance has rattled the ISU campus. The Black Student Union organized a candlelight vigil Thursday night, attended by about 400 students. Adeyooye’s parents spoke briefly before the vigil began.
“I love you. I miss you. Please bring her back home,” said Yinka Adeyooye, her mother.
Normal is a relatively quiet community of 40,000 people, police said. There were about 32 crimes per 1,000 people in 2004, according to statistics reported by the Illinois State Police. The adjacent city of Bloomington has about 70,000 people and a higher crime rate, 43 per 1,000 people. Chicago has about 62 crimes per 1,000.
Homicides are rare in both Bloomington and Normal, Kotte said. The last on the ISU campus occurred in 1993 when a college student was murdered by a former boyfriend.
Rebecca Brown, 28, a public relations major in her junior year, grew up in Normal.
“Normal is one of those places where you can still let your kids play outside and you don’t have to worry about traffic, pedophiles, abductions, those kind of things,” she said.
“The theory of in loco parentis (in which a university holds parental authority and responsibility over students) is not official policy any longer, but in fact, when people send us their kids, they expect us to keep them safe,” said Al Bowman, university president. “Legally, our students are adults, but in terms of the way we govern the institution, we approach their well-being as though they were our own children.”
Not everyone on the Illinois State University campus is convinced that Adeyooye’s case is different from other disappearances that have ended well, said Candice Marshall, 21, of Palatine, a junior geology major.
“This is really bad time; a lot of kids are feeling the pressure [of mid-term exams],” Marshall said. “Some people think she just left.”
But the mystery has caused many students, mostly young women, to alter their lifestyles.
Stephanie Frood, 18, a freshman business major from Fox Lake, said the women who live on her floor in Whitten Tower think more about their safety now.
“We go out as a group and come back as a group, whereas before everybody did what they wanted,” Frood said.
Amanda Stien, 20, who lives in a first-floor apartment in Adeyooye’s building, said she has made the 45-minute trip to her parents’ home in Pekin the last two nights rather than stay alone in her apartment.
“I’m scared to death,” she said.
———-
jkimberly@tribune.com
jsjostrom@tribune.com
