Hi everyone.
I'm a long-time WS lurker but had to join to discuss Mickey's disappearance. It just hits too close to home. I teach at UL-Lafayette, where Mickey is a student (she isn't a student I've had in class). I commute from about an hour away but love Lafayette and often run in the areas around campus after I finish teaching for the day.
I have gone running down by Cajundome Blvd a few times. This is near where Mickey's route may have taken her. The area and most of the areas around campus are pretty populated and safe, with no ravines, drop-offs, (Lafayette is flat) or wooded areas that I can think of.
I noticed no one has mentioned that there is a serial killer in who has killed either 8 or 9 women in Jennings, Louisiana, which isn't that far away from Lafayette (maybe a 40 minute ride). There's a thread about these murders on WS (not sure how to link it yet). There also have been a few women who have gone missing in the past decade in Mansfield, Louisiana and the areas surrounding Shreveport- many of these women have threads under the missing section on WS but not one thread about the area's missing women all together. I think (from Googling) that many people believe these disappearances are connected to the I-45 serial killer(s) and/or serial killers operating in Texas as well.
I hope and pray this is not the case, but I am worried about this girl being a serial killer's victim.....if you check WS or google, there are too many missing women in Louisiana. Having lived through the time when Derek Todd Lee and Sean Vincent Gillis (the Baton Rouge serial killers) were very active in the early 2000s, this is scaring me so badly....for all women in Louisiana but especially for Mickey. I just worry that sometimes authorities don't realize there's a pattern or serial killer until it's been far too late. It's also scary as a woman who works in Lafayette and drives and runs alone a lot.