MERRITT — A local father made an urgent plea at an RCMP press conference Friday afternoon for his missing adult daughter to call home.

“Brandy, we urge you to call home . . . We're worried about you, your mother and I . . . please call home … please.”

Those were the words Rick Thompson sent to his daughter Brandy Deann Cowell, 32, who did not arrive home from an overnight visit with her new boyfriend Aug. 31.

Flanked by Merritt RCMP Const. Tracy Dunsmore and his wife, Catherine, Thompson also spoke about his six-year-old grandson.

“And your son asks about you every day. He misses you. And we know that you wouldn't miss his first day of school intentionally.”

Dunsmore told reporters that Brandy is described “as a very good mother and for her to miss her son's first day of school is very much out of the norm.”

“It's baffling and frustrating and it's concerning.”

She asked anyone who may have seen Cowell or her boyfriend, Robert Bishop, 34, to call Merritt RCMP or Crime Stoppers.

Bishop has not been reported as missing, but RCMP are looking for him as well because he was the last person she was seen with Sept. 1.

Bishop, who is unemployed, is from Kamloops and has a criminal record, Dunsmore said. She refused to elaborate on that history, but said she was not aware of any violent incidents involving him.

She added that Cowell called her family Sept. 1 and said she was in Chilliwack, but the call was actually traced to Princeton.

“We have nowhere to search. They reported it a week after she went missing because they have been doing their own type of investigation — calling family, calling friends, calling people where they think she may have gone.”

Dunsmore said Cowell asked her family to watch her son and dog for one night. Then she called Sept. 1 and said she would be away an extra day.

“It didn't seem out of the ordinary. She didn't seem like she was in any kind of panic or trouble, so they just took her at her word. When she didn't show up in a couple of days, that's when they made the call to police.”

The couple was driving Cowell's 2008 red Charger with a black spoiler. The licence plate is expired so there may be a temporary operating permit, an expired plate or even a stolen plate on the vehicle.

MERRITT NEWS