(OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.) — The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said it is looking into the “suspicious disappearance” of two women after their vehicle was found abandoned over the weekend in a remote part of the state near the Kansas border.
The women, Veronica Butler, 27, and Jilian Kelley, 39, were traveling together to pick up children when they went missing, the bureau said in a statement.
“They never made it to the pickup location,” law enforcement advisory said. “Their car was located abandoned on the side of the road.”
Their vehicle was found on Saturday in Texas County in Oklahoma — south of Elkhart, Kansas, near Highway 95 and Road L — the bureau’s statement said. The local sheriff’s office located the vehicle, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Hunter McKee told ABC News.
“There’s every reason to believe that they could be in danger,” McKee said. “It was a very rural area. They’re nowhere to be found. … The fact that we’ve had no contact with them for this long.”
McKee said investigators were able to determine the two women were in the vehicle together before they went missing.
Both women are involved in church communities in Hugoton, Kansas, according to Butler’s pastor, Tim Singer, with the Hugoton Assembly of God.
Kelley is the wife of a pastor at Hugoton First Christian Church, according to Singer.
Singer described the two mothers as “acquaintances” and said that they were picking up Butler’s children to attend a birthday party when they went missing.
There’s a lot of “shock” and “confusion” in the community amid their mysterious disappearance, he told ABC News.
“We’re expecting their return to Hugoton and to see their faces again,” he said.
The Texas County Sheriff’s Department, Oklahoma Highway Patrol and other agencies are aiding the investigation.
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