Mom missing for a week is found dead on side of Mississippi interstate, cops say

A missing mom from Tennessee was found dead on the side of a highway in Mississippi a week after she disappeared, deputies said.

Cadaver dogs found 30-year-old Kelly Sistrunk on Feb. 4 in a wooded area off Interstate 22, a spokesperson for the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office told McClatchy News.

She had been shot in the head and appeared to have been there for several days, deputies said.

“It is one of the most horrendous scenes I’ve seen in my many years of investigation,” Marshall County sheriff Kenny Dickerson told WREG.

Dickerson said deputies found her cellphone, which they had been tracking.

Sistrunk’s mother reported the 30-year-old was last seen the evening of Jan. 28 in her driveway in Memphis, the Memphis Police Department shared. Thirty minutes later, she was gone, and family hadn’t seen her since.

A few days after her disappearance, Memphis police issued a city watch for Sistrunk, saying it was unlike her not to speak with her family or check in on her son.

“Her baby’s 2 years old. They took away a daughter, they took away a mother, they took away a sister, they took away a granddaughter, a cousin, a niece,” her mother said in an interview with WHBQ, adding that whoever did it threw her away “like she was some garbage.”

Memphis police canceled the city watch for Sistrunk on Feb. 5 after her body was discovered. Investigators in Memphis are working with Marshall County deputies to determine when and where Sistrunk was killed.

Marshall County is just south of the Tennessee-Mississippi border, about 50 miles southeast of Memphis.

This story was originally published February 6, 2024 at 12:15 PM with the headline "Mom missing for a week is found dead on side of Mississippi interstate, cops say."