AURORA, Colo. (KDVR) – July 15 marks nine years since the disappearance of Lashaya Stine in Colorado. Police and her family told affiliate KDVR that they will not give up searching for her.
Lashaya Stine was last seen on surveillance video walking near Peoria Street and Montview Boulevard at 2:15 a.m. on July 15, 2016. She was 16 years old at the time.
Stine was an honors student at George Washington High School. Her family said she was planning to go to college to study nursing.
“It’s unbelievable,” Stine’s mother, Sabrina Jones, said. “I have a stack this big of college applications that came in for her. I still have them.”
Stine would now be 25 years old. She is Jones’s only daughter.
“Even though everybody’s gone on with their lives, they might have forgotten, we will never forget,” Jones said. “Just understand that we’re still looking for her. And I dream all the time about her and what she would look like, how she would talk, and I would give just about anything just to see her face.”
“We’re never going to give up on this case,” Aurora Police Department’s Agent Matthew Longshore said. “We’ve had investigators who have since promoted many ranks that aren’t giving up.”
Aurora police and the FBI searched a vacant house in Aurora in 2020 in connection with Stine’s disappearance.
“The house was the family’s of somebody that we believed was involved,” Longshore said. “They vacated and the owner of that house actually let us go into the basement. We dug up a good portion of the basement, hoping to find some sort of clues to help lead us to information on where she is, where she might be. They’re never going to give up on this case.”
APD told KDVR that detectives followed up on a tip in the last couple of months.
“They flew out of state, contacted this person who they thought might be involved,” Longshore said. “It didn’t turn into anything substantial, but it’s small things like this that investigators are able to follow up on.”
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Aurora Police Department or Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at (720) 913-7867. There is a reward, and you can remain anonymous.
“Maybe you were scared, maybe you were worried about what people would say, but I’m not going to judge you,” Jones said. “Whatever information that you have that would lead me to find out whatever happened to my daughter, I’ll accept it with open arms.”
