MISSING: Brittany Wallace Shank

**Brit Prawat** (0:00)
Hi, Crime Junkies, it's Brit. If you're like me and you're ready to dive into even more cases, there's another podcast I think you're gonna love, Park Predators.
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:44)
St. Joseph County 9-1-1, where is the emergency?

**Brittany Wallace Shank** (0:46)
Um, off of Fawn River.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:49)
Okay, you're on Fawn River Road near what cross street? What cross street or what address are you at on Fawn River?

**Brittany Wallace Shank** (0:59)
Where we at?

**SPEAKER_4** (1:02)
I don't know what street. We're on Fawn River Road.

**Brittany Wallace Shank** (1:06)
I guess it's on Fawn River.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:08)
Okay, do you have an address on Fawn River?

**Brittany Wallace Shank** (1:11)
Um, here's the guy.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:12)
Okay, sure.

**Ashley Flowers** (1:14)
That 911 call you just heard came into St. Joseph County Dispatch just before nine at night on November 30th, 2018 from a house off of Rural Road right outside Sturgis, Michigan.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:28)
Okay, can you tell me what's going on there tonight?

**SPEAKER_4** (1:31)
I don't know. The girl just came to the back door and she had no shoes on, no coat. She's bleeding on her feet, her arms.
She said her boyfriend took off somewhere. He wrecked the car and took off running, I guess.

**Ashley Flowers** (1:47)
If you didn't catch all that, the man, his name is John, said that the young woman that came to his back door was stranded after her boyfriend wrecked their car and then took off on foot without her. It was bitter cold with snow on the ground. So the fact that she showed up barefoot with no coat and a bit scratched up and bleeding was cause for concern.
Okay.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:10)
So she said that her boyfriend took off from the area. Do you know, was he abusing her or what happened?

**SPEAKER_4** (2:18)
I don't know. I couldn't tell you that.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:20)
Okay. All right. Would you say that she's, I mean, does she need medical attention or she said it's not serious or what's going on?

**Ashley Flowers** (2:29)
Under the static and radio chatter, you can hear the young woman John is speaking to in the background of the call. She doesn't sound panicked, her tone is measured, and she tells them that she does want medical attention.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:45)
She's talking about her new job.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:47)
Okay. Yeah, absolutely. We'll get somebody down that way for her. Do you have an order name there?

**SPEAKER_4** (2:52)
You want to tell me her name? She's all single and doesn't want to talk to me.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:58)
Okay.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:00)
Welcome back to here.

**Ashley Flowers** (3:03)
That's the moment when the woman takes off from John's, still barefoot but wearing a green John Deere sweatshirt that John had given her for warmth.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:13)
If you can tell her that help is coming down that way, I just need her to stay there if she wants assistance.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:20)
Yeah, she went outside and got her shoes on and I gave her a jacket.

**Ashley Flowers** (3:25)
Law enforcement would later learn that the woman who ran was 23-year-old Brittany Wallace Shank. She was moments away from help, but something pulled her away from the safety of John's back porch. What or who or why has never been fully determined. Because since Brittany slipped into the darkness that November night back in 2018, she has never been seen again. And trying to understand what happened to her, what even brought Brittany out to that rural road to begin with, and who she was with, opens a Pandora's box of conflicting stories, troubling allegations, and a mystery that has taken on a life of its own.
I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

**Brit Prawat** (4:13)
And I'm Brit.

**Ashley Flowers** (4:14)
And welcome back, Crime Junkies.
The entire scenario that kicked off this case, a woman comes to a stranger's door, a little worse for the wear, shoeless, coatless, in the cold, saying she was in a car wreck and her boyfriend took off and left her. Then she takes off just before deputies are about to come. That would be more than enough for a red flag to be thrown up for Crime Junkies, right? We would be spiraling and jumping into action. Actually, we've literally seen this play out before. This feels like a slightly different version of the start to our episode on LISC, when Shannon Gilbert was running to a house looking for help.