HOUSTON — Passing out flyers with his name and picture in a busy Heights neighborhood, the family of Delano Burkes, 26, continues searching.
It's been nearly five days since said he went missing early Sunday morning. He was last seen on video around 1 a.m.
“We don’t know what happened. It’s like a mystery. He just disappeared," Burkes' mother, Karen Jeffley, said.
Jeffley and Burkes' wife, Autumn, said they knew something was wrong that day when they hadn’t heard from him.
“He just didn’t call, so that’s not like him at all," Jeffley said.
“It’s been hard because you’re trying to keep going and think positive, but then reality starts to set in that you don’t know," Autumn said.
According to family members, Delano went out Saturday night with friends. One of those friends, they said, was driving Delano’s car when they pulled over in a restaurant parking lot near Bevis and West 19th and 20th Streets in the Heights.
That’s when they said Delano went next door to McIntyre’s to use the bathroom.
They said a video they obtained shows Delano leaving McIntyre’s after being asked to leave and then appearing to run and stumble in more videos they got from other nearby businesses.
“I was wondering if someone was chasing him. Like, why would he take off running across ... across the ditch like that?” Jeffley said.
According to family members, Delano's friends left without him.
“His friends had his car so it wouldn’t have been like him ... when his friends called they said he had already been gone a whole day and he didn’t call them to retrieve his car," Jeffley said.
Delano’s phone ran out of battery and he also didn’t have an ID.
“He’s not at the hospital. He’s not with the police station," Jeffley said.
They’re turning to the community for help.
“No matter what, he would call me. He would call his family. He will make sure that he got home. So this is completely just like not normal and something’s wrong," Autumn said.
Houston police said it's still an active investigation. If you know anything, you're asked to call HPD's Missing Persons Unit at 832-394-1840.