A (4:13)
Dive right into it. So today's story takes place in Shelby, North Carolina. It's this quaint little town. It's about an hour west of Charlotte. It's surrounded by all of this farmland and woods, very quiet, not necessarily isolated though. It's this tight knit community where everyone really seems to know everyone. It's also described just from doing the research as being a pretty low income area. And one of the families that lives there is the degree family. On February 13, 2000, their day starts like any other Sunday. They go to church in the morning where a nine year old cousin of Asia Degree says that that day Asia seemed really happy. Asha even brings along this new Tweety Bird purse that she was obsessed with at the time. She got it from her classroom treasure chest just a few days before because she was behaving very well at school. And you know, that day she was maybe feeling a little bit down on herself too because the day before that, Asha's basketball team lost their championship game and Asia kind of felt responsible because she fouled out. Though her mom, Iquila degree feels like she has a way to lift her spirits that day. After church, she brings asia and her 10 year old brother O' Brien to another cousin's home where Asia's grandmother absolutely spoils them with Valentine's Day candy. Asha's father Harold takes off for work and he leaves the kids with their mother. Harold works a couple of jobs, but he mainly works as a dock loader for a company called PPG1 that makes paints and industrial coatings. And after a few hours with the family at the cousin's house, Iquilla brings the kids back to their home. Once they get settled in, Aisha, who is very exhausted from the weekend, goes to bed early. Sometime around 6:30pm and it's also around that time that the weather outside starts turning really nasty. There's a thunderstorm watch in the area and they're forecasting really heavy rain, strong winds. Two hours later, the weather is so bad it actually wakes Asia up and she comes and joins her family in the living room as they're all watching TV. It's specifically the NBA all star game. And then around 9pm There's a car crash near the house that happens and it knocks out power to the entire neighborhood. Normally Iquilla would give the kids a bath around that time, but since the power was out, she decided she's just gonna skip it for the evening. She'll give them baths in the morning before school and so she just tells them to both go to bed. Now, Asha and o' Brien share a bedroom. So Asia climbs into her bed. She's wearing a white nightgown. Her hair is still in pigtails from the day. Now the kids seem to be in pretty good spirits when they go to bed that night. The next day is Valentine's Day. It's also their parents 12 year wedding anniversary. Harold, the father, is a little bit more of a night owl in the family. He actually stays up pretty late that night. And when the power comes back on around 12:30 in the morning, he goes back to watching TV. Then at 2:30 in the morning, he's finally ready to call it a night. So he does one final check on the kids. He peeks into their bedroom and he sees that both Asha and o' Bryant are sleeping peacefully in their bed. But then sometime after 2:30 in the morning, something seems to happen. Asia's brother O' Brient feels like he hears Asha's bed creak kind of in the darkness. He assumes at the time that Asha's just getting up to go to the bathroom. So he really doesn't think much of it and he just goes straight back to bed. Then couple Hours later, at 5:45 in the morning, Iquilla's alarm goes off. She was planning to get the kids up pretty early because they still needed to take baths. So she goes into the bathroom, she starts running the water. Then she opens the kids bedroom door. Around 6.30am O' Brien is there. He's under his covers just like always. She calls his name, he jumps up. He's pretty ready for school. But Asia's bed, she notices, is empty. And Iquilla starts searching everywhere. Asia's not in o' Brien's bed, which is where she would sometimes sleep if she had a nightmare. She's not in the kitchen. Aquila goes around. She checks every room and closet in the house. Nothing. There's no sign of her. The doors to the outside are all locked too, which is interesting. But Asia's backpack and her tweety bird purse are missing. At this point, Iquila starts panicking a little bit. So she goes and she wakes up her husband Harold, and she tells him that she can't find Asia anywhere in the house. And he immediately leaps out of bed and he helps her look around. They check their cars. Maybe she snuck out and fell asleep in one of the cars somehow. They're just really trying to think of like any situation that could have happened anywhere. Ye they're running around their yard trying to see if she's anywhere in the yard, but there's nothing. Harold suggests at the time that maybe Asia went across the street because that's where his mother lives. So they call over there and Asha is not there. At 6:39am Harold calls 911 and says really what? No parent should ever have to say. But he says that I would like to report a child missing. Now let's backtrack for one second and just talk a little bit more about Asia and her family. So Asia Jacquillo, Degree was born on August 5, 1990 in Shelby, North Carolina and she lived there her entire life. She was described as being this shy, sweet nine year old. She was described as being average size for her age, about 4 foot 6 and 60 pounds. But that demeanor doesn't fool anyone because Asia was fiercely competitive, especially when it came to basketball. She was a star point guard on her youth team, and she took basketball very seriously. She hated losing. And when her team suffered their first defeat, the one that I was talking about, that happened on February 12th, so the Saturday before she went missing, she was pretty upset about it. She took it really hard. But no matter how upset she got at losing or how mad she was at herself, she knew that she could always count on her family for comfort and support. They always, always were there cheering her on, and she was always really surrounded by family. Her grandmother, Harold's mom, lived right across the street. Her cousins also lived nearby. And her parents did their best to provide a really lovely life for Asha and her brother, o'. Bryant. But it wasn't always easy for them to do so. Both Harold and Iquilla worked really long hours. Harold as a dock loader at PBG and Iquilla at the nearby Kauai piano manufacturing plant. Since they were always busy, they trusted their kids to be pretty independent. Some describe them as being kind of latchkey kids. A lot of the times they were trusted to be on their own after school while their parents were working. But regardless of how much they worked, Asia's parents always kept a really close eye on their kids. They were very fiercely protective of these children. For example, in the year 2000, home computers started becoming really, really common, but the degrees always chose to not have one. O' Bryant said it's because his parents were, quote, old school. And yes, they didn't really like the new technology, but they also didn't trust it around their children, especially Aquilla, because she had heard all of these horror stories about predators using the Internet to lure children. She was afraid of that. She definitely didn't want to take any chances. And apparently it seems like Asia took her parents concerns pretty seriously, too. She was described as being the kind of girl who was pretty hesitant of strangers. I read too, just in the research that she wouldn't even pet dogs that she didn't know. Like, that's how cautious she was as a child. And that's why her disappearance was so incredibly baffling to people.
