by Patrick H. Moore
Perhaps the single most awful thing for a parent is to have your beloved child vanish without a trace. This is what has happened to a heartbroken Texas mother, Jonni Lee McElroy, whose 23-year-old daughter, Christina Marie Morris, disappeared without a trace from a parking garage in Plano, Texas at 3:55 am on the morning of August 30th. This means that Christina was abducted (which certainly appears to be the case here) nearly two months ago, and although a search has been conducted ever since on several fronts, there has been no trace of her.
What adds a peculiar terror and poignancy to this case is the fact that being abducted has been Christina’s worst nightmare since she was a young child.
David Lohr writes for the Huffington Post:
“What is happening to her right now has been her own worst nightmare since she has been little,” Jonni Lee McElroy told The Huffington Post on Monday.
Although it is small comfort, the facts of the case are fairly clear right up until the time the victim vanished. Here is what happened:
Christina, who went to high school in Plano, earned a degree in business and marketing from the University of Texas, Dallas campus, in 2013. She then moved to nearby Fort Worth where she went to work for Great Expectations, a dating service.
(I’m probably being a snob, which is somewhat rare for me, but somehow I find going to all the effort to earn a business and marketing degree from a major university only to then have to take a job at a dating service rather depressing. But hell, it’s certainly better than being unemployed.)
In any event, shortly before her disappearance, Christina, who hadn’t been home to see her friends for three months, traveled the 49.3 miles from Fort Worth to Plano, presumably via the President George Bush Turnpike. On the evening of August 29th, she went out with her friends to get caught up and just have good time. They either spent the evening at The Shops at Legacy in Plano, which is advertised as an urban lifestyle center with unique shopping, award-winning restaurants and lounges, etc., or ended up there at the end of the evening.
According to her mother, Christina’s plan was to spend the night with one of her girlfriends at the friend’s apartment, but cruel fate intervened in the form of Christina’s boyfriend who for unknown reasons got angry, perhaps because Christina was out socializing with her (girl)friends at all hours of the night. In any event Christina and the unidentified boyfriend, who was waiting for her back at her place in Fort Worth, GOT INTO A TEXT MESSAGE DISPUTE.
(I’m getting more and more upset as I write this.) I know it’s human nature but we guys and gals take this intimate relationship thing far too seriously at too young an age. So they got in a text message dispute? So what? The sky wasn’t falling. Except to poor Christina it was. So what did she decide to do? She decided to drive back down the President George Bush Turnpike to Fort Worth to try and mend the fences with her BF.
(Oh dear God, deliver us all from the accidental yet fatal mistakes that we mortals make all too often without even trying.)
“She met her friends around 9 p.m. the night before she disappeared,” McElroy (Christina’s mother) said. “One of the girls is friends with Enrique (Arochi) and had invited him to come with them.”
“She was upset and wanted to go, so Enrique volunteered to walk her to her car.”
“She would never have gone into that parking garage by herself,” McElroy said. “She never, ever would walk out to her car at night unless someone walked her out.”
Christina’s car was parked in the mall parking garage and she is seen on a surveillance video, at about 3:55 a.m. entering the garage with a man who has been identified as 24-year-old Enrique Arochi, who went to high school with Arochi. She has not been seen since.
“He’s not someone she regularly hung out with,” McElroy said… “She had not seen him since high school.”
David Lohr reports that when contacted by the HuffPost on Monday, the Plano Police Department “did not dispute Arochi was the person captured on video with Morris, but they also did not call him a suspect or person of interest in the case.”
“I can tell you that nobody has been ruled out,” Plano police spokesman David Tilley told HuffPost.
“They walked into the parking garage and, according to him, they split and went in opposite directions,” Tilley said. “He said he went to one side of the garage where he was parked and she went to the other side of the garage, where her car was parked. A lot of people have said that is not the case – what he is saying is not correct – but we don’t know. We don’t have any evidence to support either way.”
Let’s stop right here. This really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it? Christina is deathly afraid of abduction; it’s 3:55 am; she’s walking into a presumably deserted parking garage with a man whom she only knows slightly, who “has volunteered to walk her to her car,” and instead of walking her to her car, “he went to one side of the garage where he was parked and she went to the other side of the garage, where her car was parked.” This doesn’t add up. Christina is a perky little blonde with a big smile and no self-respecting dude is going to abandon her in the parking garage at 3:55 am without seeing her safely to her car, is he?
Something fishy here and I suspect the police know full well that something’s fishy. They, however, do not have sufficient evidence to arrest Arochi or even lean on him hard, not yet.
It’s not at all odd that Christina’s silver Toyota Celica “was found in the parking garage” and it presumably had not been moved since she left it there but it’s damned odd that it wasn’t discovered there until “four days later”. (I am informed that Christina’s boyfriend apparently didn’t inform anyone that she was missing until four days after their text message feud.)
Police spokesman Tilley did say that police have obtained additional surveillance videos from the area:
“The video has been withheld, as far as from being released, in case this does turn into a criminal investigation.”
Plano detectives have naturally questioned Arochi, who was reportedly initially cooperative, and they have also questioned everyone else who was there with Christina that fated evening, and they have also been reportedly cooperative:
“We initially were talking to him and all the people that were with Christina that evening,” Tilley said. “They were all cooperative from the initial part of the investigation, but at this point in time, we’re not commenting on what cooperation level they have extended to us.”
So basically the police are being very careful with what they say.
Christina’s family and Texas EquuSearch, have conducted numerous searches for her, but they have all been futile. And a $25,000 reward has been offered for information that leads to her being found.
Morris is white, female, 5-foot-4 and weighs approximately 100 pounds. She has blonde hair and brown eyes.
“Christina is a beautiful girl,” McElroy said. “I am afraid she may have been sold for prostitution. I believe she is still alive — I feel that. I know I would feel it if she wasn’t.”
“I beg anyone with information to think about it as if it is their daughter, mother or sister,” McElroy said. “Have a conscious (conscience?). Feel our pain. This is a nightmare we are living. It’s not fair. We need her back — she needs to be back with us. Someone out there knows something.”
Someone out there definitely knows something. It could be Enrique Arochi who I suspect the police are keeping a close eye on or it could be someone else who abducted her IF Arochi actually abandoned her in the parking lot.
Whatever happened, I’m in a churlish mood and there’s plenty of blame to go around. Her (girl)friends should never have placed her fate in Arochi’s hands. She barely knew the guy, for crying out loud. If Arochi had nothing to do with her abduction, he still is somewhat to blame for abandoning her in the parking garage at 3:55 am (which doesn’t ring true because she was deathly afraid of being abducted). If Arochi is responsible for her disappearance I hope to hell the 
police unearth sufficient evidence to arrest him and charge him. He would seem to be an obvious “person of interest”, notwithstanding what the police are willing to divulge at this time.
The phone number for the Plano Police Department is (972) 424-5678 or tips can be submitted anonymously at 1-877-373-TIPS or online at ntcc.crimestoppersweb.com.
Poor freakin’ Christina. And her poor mother. Imagine hoping that your daughter has been “sold for prostitution” because you can’t bear to think that she’s dead…