FAIRFIELD, Calif. — For at least one childhood friend, the search for Erica Brown will last until she's brought home.
Brown was reported missing on Aug. 25. Police described the disappearance as suspicious and have been trying to track down her boyfriend Mark Randle in connection to the case. Recently, they announced a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Notably, police no longer believe Brown is alive, but her loved ones still have hope.
"There's always some hope that we will find her -- that it's all wrong, you know? And so we do hold on to that and it keeps us going. But as the days go by, time goes by, and there's no answers, it gets harder and harder. But I don't think we'll ever let go of that hope until we bring her home," said Nikila Walker Gibson, Brown's childhood friend.
The two friends went to school together and kept in touch as they got older, carving out time in between busy lives to see each other on occasion. She still remembers her as a loving and caring "sweetheart" with an undeniable smile.
But amid a busy life of work and family, time seemed to freeze when she got a message from one of her friends about Brown.
"It just really came as a shock. It hit like a ton of bricks to hear that something had happened to her, especially at, potentially, at the hands of her boyfriend, and I did not know him very well at all," said Gibson.
She and other friends couldn't get ahold of her and were left with little choice but to wait for answers.
"All we can do is wait. We can't call her... no one's home, so we had no choice but to wait. And that was really hard because the world seems so big when you don't know where to start," said Gibson.
Eventually, Gibson and other friends got together to make flyers to help with the search. All the while, they looked back at what they might have missed before she disappeared.
"We don't want to take the blame, but we feel like we should have seen something. We should have been able to know that something wasn't right, you know? But her smile never faded through everything. We have no idea what she could have been going through to get to the point, to the event escalating to this point," said Gibson.
While there are few answers in Brown's disappearance, Gibson and her friends continue to search and spread word.
"It's hard because we really don't know what has happened, and we just know that she is missing. We don't know where she is, and we're trying to find her," she said.
On the other hand, Randle, now wanted by police, was described as being 45 years old with ties to Fairfield. He's also known to go by "Tweezy," "Tweez" and "Mark Twain." Around the time of Brown's disappearance, he was last seen driving an early 2000's 4-door black Mercedes sedan.
"I just want everyone to keep an eye out for him, but do not approach -- and if he's listening, or someone knows, to encourage him to turn himself in so that her family can have closure, her friends can have closure and her little girl can have closure," Gibson said.
Police ask anyone who sees Randle to call 911 if he's seen. Anyone with tips about where he is or about the case can call the Investigations Unit at (707)428-7600.
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