SEARCH FOR STUDENT EXPANDS
Friends And rugby teammates Are growing more Concerned A week After Promise Chukwudum’s mysterious disappearance
Friends of Promise Chukwudum describe him as a talented athlete and an avid social-media user who always kept in touch with his peers, making his disappearance since last Saturday very concerning.
Chukwudum, known to his friends as Max, is a 19-year-old computer science student at the University Regina. He also plays rugby for the U of R Cougars’ men’s team. According to the Regina Police Service (RPS), he was last seen near Marshall Crescent, in Regina’s Normanview area, in the early morning hours of Nov. 17. He has not been seen since, nor has he had contact with family or friends.
Chukwudum is black, about 5-foot-11 and 240 pounds with a medium build and short brown hair. He was last seen wearing a dark hooded sweater, light coloured sweatpants and a dark toque.
As part of police efforts to locate Chukwudum, uniformed officers and members of Search and Rescue Regina (SARR) began conducting a sweep of the neighbourhoods surrounding Marshall Crescent earlier this week and later expanded further west, to the area of 3rd Avenue and Arthur Street in the Rosemont/transcona neighbourhood.
A spokesperson with the RPS said SARR is used to assist police when there is a need to physically search an area for someone.
POLICE SEARCH LANDFILL
Those search efforts continued Friday in that area and also took officers to the city ’s landfill — to no avail. According to RPS, investigators felt the need to consider the landfill as a possible search area, and had do it while the opportunity was present.
Police were searching an area of the landfill where garbage trucks had just deposited contents from recent pickups in the neighbourhood where Chukwudum was last seen.
Chukwudum was active on social media right up to early Saturday morning
Chukwudum is known to be very active on the social medium platform Snapchat, and friends have said it’s been unusual not to see any updates from him.
“If everyone has that one friend who is constantly on social media, Max is ours,” said Nathan Sgrazzutti, who plays with Chukwudum on the U of R’s rugby team.
Sgrazzutti said Chukwudum’s posts on Snapchat indicated he was at O’hanlon’s Irish Pub last Friday night, Nov. 16. The last post Sgrazzutti saw on Snapchat was at 12:33 a.m. Saturday. After that, Sgrazzutti isn’t sure where Chukwudum went next. One thing in Chukwudum’s posts that stood out to Sgrazzutti was that he didn’t recognize the people with whom he was hanging out.
“It looked like some of the people he was with weren’t his normal crowd,” Sgrazzutti said.
Sgrazzutti said he planned to visit the pub and view its security footage to see if he could identify anyone Chukwudum had interacted with at the pub. He said Chukwudum made friends easily, and it wouldn’t be unusual for him to meet new people at a bar.
Monica Tataquason, another friend of Chukwudum, said she offered him a ride home when she saw his posts that night on Snapchat. Chukwudum said he was fine, but hasn’t responded to any of her messages since then.
“It’s very odd because we talk every day, and he would just reply to anything. It doesn’t matter what kind of text it was,” Tataquason said.
Chukwudum was introduced to rugby when he joined the team last fall, and quickly became a skilled player. He plays the position of flanker, which Sgrazzutti said is similar to a running back in football.
“When we all got to know him he started out as a pretty quiet guy, but once he’s comfortable with you he’s warm, kind-hearted open and honest with you, tells you what he thinks and he tells you right away,” Sgrazzutti said.
Sgrazzutti said Chukwudum is originally from Nigeria, and Sgrazzutti does not believe he has family in Regina.
“We want to know where he is,” he added.
Anyone with information on Chukwudum’s whereabouts can contact the Regina Police Service at 306-777-6500. Police are asking all residents in the areas being searched to take a few minutes to check their yards, outbuildings, fences and shrubbery to ensure that nothing has been disturbed or looks out of place.