Police 'confident' someone has seen missing Greenbelt teacher

GREENBELT, Md. — Greenbelt Maryland’s Police Chief Richard Bowers says he is "confident" there is someone who has seen missing teacher Mariam Sylla or has information about where she might be.

On Thursday, Bowers appealed for tips as the national website run by the Black and Missing Foundation featured Sylla's case on their website.

“I believe that somewhere out there somebody who has seen her and knows where she is and can provide important information as to her whereabouts," Bowers told a gathering of Sylla's friends, colleagues and parents of students she taught who gathered Thursday at Greenbelt Police Headquarters for a media briefing.

Sylla is a beloved teacher at the Dora Kennedy French Immersion School in Prince George’s County. who mysteriously vanished on July 29,  touching off a major search effort.

Police are not ruling out foul play, but they say they don’t have any conclusive evidence either way.

Bowers did not say what leads him to be confident there is someone with information. He said an investigation of Sylla’s cell phone records, social media accounts, financial records and possible passport activity have yielded no “positive” results.

The news left parent Meadow Platt holding back tears.

“My son is really worried," Platt said. "He's 10. We went out last night putting up posters of her around the neighborhood and he was knocking on doors handing out flyers asking if anyone had seen her.”

Sylla went missing on July 29 when she did not return from a routine walk near Schrom Hill Park in Greenbelt by her home. Police say her cell phone last pinged in that area, but based on exhaustive searches, investigators say they don’t think she’s anywhere there here now.

Fellow Dora Kennedy school teacher John Enoh says Sylla is like a sister to him.

"I'm not surprised that she took a walk that evening because she did that religiously," Enoh said.

"There's nothing that would make me think that anything like this could have happened -- either with her health or anything else.”

Greenbelt Police also said today they have no information that might link Sylla’s case to the discovery of two unidentified bodies in other parts of Prince George’s County found in the past two weeks.

They continue to classify the Sylla mystery as a “missing persons case”.