Black And Missing
Teleka Patrick video footage released from the night doctor went missing
The disappearance of Dr. Teleka Patrick has her family, friends, and community members stumped on what happened to the promising young doctor.
Authorities have released video footage of the night Dr. Teleka Patrick went missing.
The disappearance of Dr. Teleka Patrick has her family, friends, and community members stumped on what happened to the promising young doctor.
On the night she disappeared, Dr. Teleka Patrick spent nearly 20 minutes at the Radisson Plaza Hotel & Suites trying to get a room, surveillance footage released Thursday by the hotel shows.
Just after 7:34 p.m. on Dec. 5, Patrick can be seen getting out of a sedan on West Michigan Avenue and then promptly walking through the main entrance of the downtown Kalamazoo hotel.
Once inside, Patrick approaches the front desk with what appears to be cash in her hand and proceeds to carry on a conversation with a concierge for 14 minutes.
At one point when the concierge leaves the desk for several minutes, Patrick stands by the desk appearing to be relaxed, at one point flipping through a pamphlet.
The surveillance video footage does not contain audio.
Patrick’s parents indicated their daughter wasn’t able to get a room because she didn’t have enough money.
Dr. Teleka Patrick
Her purse and her cell phone were later found at Borgess Medical Center, where she worked. Patrick, 30, is a first-year medical resident in psychiatry in the Western Michigan University School of Medicine.
Around 7:35 p.m. ,after Patrick’s conversation with the concierge, she appears to wave goodbye to him. Shortly after 7:52 p.m. Patrick is seen on the hotel’s exterior camera boarding a hotel shuttle bus which Kalamazoo County sheriff’s investigators have said dropped her off at her car at about 8 p.m. in the parking lot of Borgess Medical Center.
A little more than two hours after she was dropped off at Borgess by the hotel shuttle, Patrick’s gold 1997 Lexus ES300 was found abandoned in a ditch on westbound I-94 near Portage, Ind.
Authorities found no keys in the car, and her purse and cell phone were found at the hospital were she worked before she was reported missing.
The report of Patrick being missing came after she failed to show up for work that morning at Borgess.
Patrick’s parents said their daughter completed a shift at Borgess on Dec. 5 and received a ride to the Radisson from a fellow medical resident. What remains a mystery, they said, is why she tried to get a room at the hotel when her apartment not far from Borgess.
Family members said Teleka received a suspicious phone call the day before her disappearance, one that appeared to upset her, but police have not released details of the call or who it may have come from.
Patrick came to Kalamazoo this past summer to begin her first of four years as a medical resident in psychiatry. She graduated from Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California this past spring after obtaining her medical degree and a P.h.D. in biochemistry, her parents said.