Ali Ali
Ali AliMore than a week after he disappeared, there still is no sign of missing UTC student Ali Ali.
The 24-year-old engineering master's student was last seen on UTC's campus Jan. 5, when he spent the morning applying for an assistantship. He last spoke to his brother, Hassan Elnour, the previous night about paying his rent. The rent payment remains the last activity in Ali's bank account.
Elnour arrived in Chattanooga the night of Jan. 6, and since then he and Ali's roommates have been searching tirelessly for him, checking hospitals and putting up posters with the help of local churches. Despite their efforts, their search has yielded frustratingly little information.
"Nothing," Elnour said. "No one has seen him."
Elnour has also met with Chattanooga Police Department investigators, who he says have been surveilling Stacy Town Center, the area of UTC's campus indicated by the last GPS signal from Ali's phone. Elnour said the police are also working to obtain Ali's phone records, as well as trying to determine whether Ali boarded a bus in that area. Still, Elnour said, the investigation so far hasn't yielded much.
"They don't know where he is," Elnour said. "They have no leads at all, which doesn't make any sense."
According to Elnour, his family back in Sudan is very worried, and his mother isn't handling her son's disappearance well. A urology resident at the University of Mississippi, Elnour has put his own life on hold until he finds out what happened to his brother.
"I can't go without knowing anything about him," Elnour said.
Contact Will Healey at whealey@timesfreepress.com, at (423) 757-6731, or on Twitter at @wfhealey.