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Kansas City police plea for public's help in search for missing 19-year-old St. Louis man

"I can feel that T'Montez is alive. I just want him home," said Tecona Donald-Sullivan.

ST. LOUIS — For nearly two months, Tecona Donald-Sullivan has travelled to Kansas City and passed out more than two thousand flyers searching for her missing 19-year-old grandson, T'Montez Hurt.

"I looked in alleys. I rode their buses. I went across the bridge in Kansas City, Kansas. I even went in drug houses. I have come out of buildings that have left me hallucinating," said a frustrated Donald-Sullivan on Thursday.

Despite her efforts, not even a trace of her grandson.

Donald-Sullivan says her grandson is a student at Missouri Western University and lives on campus.

That's about an hour from Kansas City.

"He is a freshman at the university. He hasn't been able to officially enroll this semester because he's missing," she added.

Donald-Sullivan says on the morning of Feb. 1, T'Montez called her from a home of a woman he recently met.

She said he sounded scared and was in mental distress.

"He just didn't sound like himself. He was rambling, not making sense. My grandson smokes marijuana. I kept on hearing him asked the girl like what did you give me? What did you lace me with and I asked him who was she and he just said I don't know granny. I then sent him to a hospital because he was not himself," recalled Donald-Sullivan.

T'Montez was discharged and last seen on video taken from a surveillance camera trying to walk inside a Kansas City Greyhound Bus Station that was closed.

"He hasn't been seen since. When I talked to the police, they told me traffic cameras in that area also caught him on video walking many blocks down street. The police never let me see that traffic video because they said it was part of their investigation," said the young man's grandmother.

On Wednesday, Kansas City police posted a flyer of the missing man on their Facebook page and for the first time pleaded for the public's help.

"I wasn't getting any help from KCPD," said Donald-Sullivan.

A KCPD spokesperson says "detectives have exhausted all investigative leads at this time and feel it is in the best interest of the case to request assistance from the public."

 "That's all I wanted in the beginning was to get him out there because Kansas City is very big. I don't know what it took for them to ask for the public's help, but I'm just glad they finally did, and, I say thank you," added the grandmother.

"Many of the people currently missing in Missouri are African Americans and when they come up missing, nobody knows. I law enforcement, families, communities we all must do a better job in trying to find these people," said Coffee Wright, the director of the Missing Persons Task Force Headquarters in St. Louis.

For more than 20 years, the non-profit has been committed to finding missing persons in the region, state and around the nation.

The group is now stepping in to help Tecona Donald-Sullivan find her grandson.

"We're not only putting together a major search, but we're putting together a  major social media and local boots on the ground campaign for awareness and we have the blessing of his grandmother," said Coffee Wright.

"I can feel that T'Montez is alive. I am very hopeful," said Donald-Sullivan.

Hurt's case is getting national attention.

Next week, NBC'S Dateline show is expected to reach out to his Donald-Sullivan and profile her grandson's case.

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