THE neighbor of five-year-old Summer Wells claims to have “heard a scream” before she disappeared – leading parents to believe their daughter “may have been kidnapped.”
JodiSue Brown told News Channel 11 that she and her two kids heard a scream about 30 minutes before they started searching for Summer, who went missing in Hawkins County’s Beach Creek Community, Tennessee on June 15.
Earlier in the day, JodiSue and her 19 and 14-year-old children were listening to outdoor noises as issues in the neighborhood had occurred the day before.
“We were kind of hyper-alert because of property things that happened the day before, so we were listening for noise; everyone was kind of quiet,” she said.
JodiSue recalled a car that went up the Wells’ driveaway that “struck her wrong.”
Next, the neighbors heard a truck door slam, which they didn’t think anything of.
Shortly after, the trio heard the alarming scream. That was the moment they became extremely concerned.
“It stopped all three of us cold,” JodiSue said of the scream.
Her son added: “We heard this shrill, almost animalistic scream.”
Animalistic, but not an animal, he said.
Shortly after JodiSue and her son went out to see where it came from.
“My son and I decided to go out and see what we could see. We went back on to the bank; didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything,” she recalled.
Around 6pm, JodiSue went out to her driveway and heard people searching for Summer.
She said: “And at this point, I start hearing them holler for Summer.
“By the third, I knew something was wrong. And then my brain immediately went, ‘scream earlier, this, uh oh.’”
“I dropped my purse,” she said. “I tried to yell up at Candus, and I’m like ‘I’m looking. And I started looking.”
While JodiSue did report the scream when she heard it back in June, she says she wishes “every day that when she heard the scream, she hadn’t tried to dismiss it.”
The family maintains that Summer was abducted by an unknown perpetrator, but so far no evidence has surfaced to support the theory.
During Friday’s interview, Dr. Phil made it clear that he does not think the parents had anything to do with Summer’s disappearance, but he did press them on if they knew anything more about who may have targeted the girl.
The two experts on the show, Scott Rouse and Greg Hartley, discussed theories that local criminals may have taken Summer — since there are organized drug rings and peddlers in the area.
“I don’t think either one of them killed or injured Summer,” Hartley said.
“I also don’t think Don has any guilty knowledge of anything, based on all the time I’ve spent with him.
Summer went missing from her home on June 15. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation they are doing everything in their power to find the missing girl.
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