Dozens help family of Lovett Moore search for blind Natomas man missing since June
He’s been missing now for three weeks.
On Sunday, Lovett Moore’s family and friends, volunteers, strangers and clergy from as far away as the Bay Area began their search once again, gathering near the Arena Boulevard gas station where the legally blind and disabled Natomas man was last seen.
Lovett Moore, 33, is 5 feet 6 inches, 140 pounds. He was wearing a long-sleeve green polo shirt and black shorts. He had a large burn bandage on his left leg, family said.
Snatches of security footage from the Aisle 1 convenience store at 3200 Arena Blvd., on June 28, are the last images anyone has to go on.
“We’ve been searching every day for three weeks now. This is the community way. This is what the family needs to see — the community showing up,” said Leia Schenk, of the community advocacy group called EMPACT. Schenk led Sunday’s search party and has been working with Moore’s family to track down leads and prod Sacramento police and local leaders to act with more urgency to find the missing man.
Moore lives with his mother in an apartment across the street from the Arena Boulevard fuel station where he was last seen. He once worked at the station — the job, family said, gave him independence — and he passed hours on a bench outside the station.
“For a man who has a disability, he acts like he didn’t. His disability wasn’t stopping him,” his uncle, Ronny Bay, said Sunday. “He’s very special. He’s always smiling. He trusts people. But there are predators here who prey on the weak. It’s a crazy world.”
Schenk said Moore was last seen with three people who walked him from the convenience store to a nearby vehicle.
Lovett’s mother, Pamela Matthews, offered a brief, heartsick appeal to the searchers gathered in the parking lot.
“Whoever has my son and you know where he is, just drop him off by the house,” Matthews said. “Just bring him home.”
Amid the public appeals to authorities to do more to find Moore, Sacramento police are still seeking clues to help bring Lovett Moore home.
“Our officers are continuing to follow up on any leads,” Officer Anthony Gamble, a Sacramento Police Department spokesman, said Wednesday. “If you think you saw him, let us do the work to find him.”
More than 50 searchers had assembled by 2 p.m., determined not to wait.
“It just shows the love and the support that the community is doing in taking the time to come in and support my family, to try to search for my brother and get answers, get closure,” said Moore’s brother, Johnny Tillis.
“For everybody being here, from the community, to my coworkers, to my family, from far and near — it just means a whole lot,” Tillis continued. “At the end of the day, everyone just wants us to be able to get some kind of information so we can move forward and do what we need to do to get my brother back or get closure to whatever happened.”
On Sunday, Schenk scrawled the search parameters on a white board.
Searchers focused on four areas, carrying printed pocket-size handouts to guide their search:
The fields along Duckhorn Drive; San Juan Road and El Centro Road, in the cornfields and along the canal; Safeway at 2851 Del Paso Road, and the Walmart at 3661 Truxel Road.
“We can cover more ground this way and it shows almost a sentimental effect that ripples through our community that shows that the community does care and shows the family that they do care about their son that’s been missing three weeks,” Schenk said.
“This is an unusual situation because this is somebody who’s at risk, who’s disabled. This is someone who can’t maneuver through the city by himself. Every single day that goes by, it heightens all of our fear of what this could be,” Schenk continued.
“We want everybody to know that he comes from somewhere. He has a family. He’s somebody’s son. He’s somebody’s brother, cousin, nephew and he had a whole life, so we can’t pretend that he’s disappeared off the face of the Earth. We’ve got to find him. Whatever that means, that’s what we have to do.”
Anyone with information is urged to call Sacramento Police Department at 916-808-5471.
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