EAST POINT, Ga. — Police in East Point may be close to figuring out the identity of a body found in the woods thanks to a woman hundreds of miles away.
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That woman, Mary Roby, tells Channel 2 Action News that she is 100% certain that the woman in the sketch is her missing daughter.
Police recently shared a sketch of the woman, whose body was found in a tote bag at a construction site.
Channel 2′s Tom Jones has been following this story and was live Thursday in East Point. That’s where the body was found last Christmas.
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After Jones reported on the story earlier last week, he heard from Roby, who said that when she saw the sketch, she almost passed out.
“I literally fell out at my job and screamed, ‘That’s my baby!’” Roby said. “The whole features, the whole face. I just know. I know my child.”
Roby identified her daughter as 30-year-old Shaneice Faison and showed Jones a side-by-side sketch.
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“She has an underbite. It was the same kind of hair-do. Little bit of bangs in the front,” Roby said.
Roby said her daughter has mental health issues and has lived between the Atlanta area and Jacksonville, Florida.
She said she stopped hearing from her daughter 14 months ago.
“And when she got to she wasn’t calling me, I knew something was wrong,” she said.
Roby said her family contacted police in Florida to look for her, but got nowhere. Roby said her daughter’s cousin found a website about missing women while looking for her in Atlanta.
“And that’s when your news report came up,” she said. “And as soon as she saw the picture, she said, ‘That’s my cousin!’”
Police said the sketch bears an amazing resemblance to Roby’s daughter, but they need to make a positive identification. Police said it would take almost a year to get DNA to determine if it is actually her. She said she doesn’t have that long.
“I’m inches away from losing my mind,” she said.
Roby has her daughter’s kids and said not knowing is driving her family out of their minds.
“See right now, my heart is racing,” Roby said. “I just want them to do the DNA and let us know.”
Roby said then, she can stop worrying about where her daughter is.
“I just need closure,” Roby said.
East Point police said they are trying to get the FBI on the case to get DNA results quicker. Officers said they have received other calls from people saying the woman in the sketch is their loved one.
They really want to identify her to get closure for the family of whomever she belongs to.
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