The family of a woman from Saint John, N.B. who went missing in February under unusual circumstances say they fear for her mental health and just want to bring her home safe.
Shannon Mary Sullivan, 39, had been working in a prestigious job in the pharmacology field in Toronto when, without warning, she decided she needed to leave the country. She abandoned everything she owned at her condo -- including her cell phone – and didn’t make contact again until arriving in Europe.
Sullivan’s family is concerned for her mental health. They say she sent a few messages shortly after she disappeared in mid-February indicating she was fearful for her financial security and that her electronic devices might have been hacked.
"She hasn't been on social media in months,” her brother, Terence Sullivan, told CTV Atlantic. “There's limited information you can get from her banks (but) there's been zero activity on Shannon."
Toronto police determined Sullivan rented a car from the Amsterdam airport in early March but abandoned it in a mall parking lot shortly after.
Terence says in one email his sister sent to her employer in February, she said she felt that someone had entered the vehicle and perhaps tampered with it, and that she didn’t feel safe to go back into it.
On a Facebook page the family set up to try to help find Sullivan, they said they recently learned Sullivan had been in touch with police in Marseille, France, in early April, to report lost documents. That appears to be her last known whereabouts.
Terence says his sister is intelligent and kind and loves to travel. But for her to go missing for this long with no contact back home is highly unusual. He says he lies awake at night wondering where she is.
A few of Shannon's long-time friends have tried to reach out to her multiple times with no response.
"The limited contact she had early on with her family and her workplace were all quite concerning, suggesting to me that she wasn't okay, that she is in a state of distress," says friend Nadine Blum.
Another friend, Elsie Yu, notes that Sullivan is mostly an introvert. “But I would hope that she knows that she does have some friends that she can talk to," she told CTV News from Danville, Pa.
Her family and friends hope the Facebook page they set up will help to locate her soon so that they can bring her home safe.
With a report from CTV Atlantic’s Mary Cranston
