CDC staffer still missing 2 weeks after leaving sick

The authorities in Atlanta announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and indictment in the case of a missing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employee who disappeared about two weeks ago.

The employee, Timothy J. Cunningham, 35, was promoted to commander in the U.S. Public Health Service in July, his family said. According to police, he was last seen Feb. 12.

“I feel like I’m in a horrible ‘Black Mirror’ episode,” Cunningham’s sister, Tiara Cunningham, said in a phone interview Saturday. “I’m kind of lost without him, to be quite honest.”

Tiara Cunningham, 27, was the last family member to speak with Cunningham before he went missing, she said.

Although they live in different states — Tiara Cunningham in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and her brother in Atlanta — they are best friends and it is not unusual for them to talk multiple times a day, she said. But their brief phone conversation Feb. 12 was a little different from most.

“He sounded not like himself,” she said, without elaborating. They ended the conversation the way they always do: “Love you. I’ll talk to you later.”

When she texted him later, she didn’t get a response. Neither did her mother, who tried to contact him that afternoon.

“That was really weird,” Tiara Cunningham said, adding that she was “devastated” by her brother’s absence.

Their father, Terrell Cunningham, 60, said his son’s supervisor told him that Cunningham had reported for work but that he had left midday because he wasn’t feeling well.

When the family had difficulty contacting him, they asked a relative to check his home. The house and the garage were locked, and two windows were open.

Cunningham’s father and his mother drove all night from their home in Waldorf to Atlanta.

They used a spare key to enter their son’s home, where he lived alone with his dog. The dog had been left unattended, which was uncharacteristic for Cunningham, Terrell Cunningham said.