Oakland, CA — Jonathan Bandabaila, a 19-year old Black teen from Oakland, has been missing since May, and his family is expressing their disappointment with the Oakland Police Department. They allegedly managed to send out a search notice about a missing dog within 2 days, but it took almost 4 months to issue a similar search notice for their loved one.
Police also recovered some of his belongings inside the car, such as his soccer uniform, gears, and clothes he planned to wear to an upcoming formal event.
His brother, Harrison Bandabaila, described Jonathan as an “amazing person” and said they had no idea why he would just disappear.
“I don’t think he ran away. There were no signs of depression or mental illness. He was happy,” he told East Bay Times.
Meanwhile, Harrison claimed the police seemed not to show concern about his brother’s vanishing.
“One of my family’s complaints was that the Oakland Police Department put out a memo that there’s a dog missing — two days after it went missing — yetit took them 149 days to put out that Jonathan was missing,” Harrison said in a recent interview on Sirius XM’s The Clay Cane Show. “Like, it’s very frustrating.”
He added that they couldn’t help but be disappointed with the fact that Jonathan’s disappearance apparently did not have enough news coverage. He said his mother watches cable news every night, hoping to see a story about it, but to no avail.
“There’s other situation’s going on in our society, in our community and they (the media) are reporting about stuff that, you know — it’s something to report on, there’s important things. But there are other things more important than that.”
Moreover, his family is offering a $2,500 reward to anyone who has information leading to Jonathan’s whereabouts.