By Erik Harris
TRUSSVILLE – Leads have started and stopped. Community searches have gone nowhere. Rewards have been offered and the days have continued to pass by without any sight of missing Trussville woman Pei Yen Sung.
The 61-year-old female went missing from her neighborhood in Trussville three weeks ago, and authorities aren’t any closer to finding her.
According to Trussville police captain Jeff Bridges, “There is no new information.” Bridges, a 23-year police force veteran, said that he’s never seen anything like this.
“As long as I’ve been doing this, I’ve never had one go missing this long. We usually find them before this,” said Bridges. “We just have not had any luck. Everything’s been a dead end.”
Although the approach has changed, the Trussville Police Department will continue its pursuit of the missing woman.
“We’re not out walking around in the woods anymore, [but] we will remain open and continue to follow up on all of the leads that are presented to us,” said Bridges.
Police encourage the public to keep its eyes open and report any suspicious findings to the Trussville Police Department.
“We’re just following up on every lead that we come across and trying to come up with new ideas to try to figure out what happened to her,” Bridges said.
It is believed that Sung went for her daily walk through the Longmeadow subdivision in Trussville, where she lives with her sister, and never returned.
Sung is described as a 61-year-old Asian female. She is 5 feet tall, weighs 118 pounds and resides in Trussville’s Longmeadow subdivision. The neighborhood is located on Trussville-Clay Road across from the Trussville Civic Center. Longmeadow also borders Service Road.
“We feel like we know people when we go to the grocery store and for something like this to happen, it’s scary,” said Tandi Glenn Smith to ABC 33/40. “We want this solved, not just for the family, not just for her friends, but for the community so that we can feel safer.”
Smith operates the “What’s happening in Trussville” Facebook page.
According to Terry Wang, who works with Sung at The Palace, nothing seemed off about Sung in the days leading up to her disappearance.
“Everything was the same,” said Wang. “She showed up for her shift and everything was the same. It was just unexpected. She was off Friday morning and was suppose to work Friday afternoon.”
That’s when Sung’s coworkers discovered she was missing. Her neighbor, who also works at The Palace, called the restaurant to see if Sung had reported for her Friday shift, as she had not returned from her daily walk through the neighborhood.
Sung has become a noticeable figure for Palace customers for years. She has worked at the Trussville restaurant for over ten years. The restaurant has offered a $5,000 reward to encourage people to bring in new information on her whereabouts.
“She’s a very likeable person,” said Wang. “She’s touched a lot of people. She’s watched a lot of our current customers grow up from when they were younger. No one has anything negative to say about her. Man, it’s just terrible.”
“The toughest part is the unknown,” said Wang.