It’s been over a year since 52-year-old Sherrell Brown walked away from her Petersburg, Virginia home.
“I want her home. It is crucial that we find out what has happened to her,” her mother, Brenda Blackwell, told Dateline. “I don’t believe that she would just go somewhere and not tell anybody anything.”
The last time Brenda saw her daughter was on September 1, 2023 — the day she went missing. “We went out early in the day to go to the grocery store,” she said. “We went out for lunch.” Sherrell is diabetic and had been experiencing seizures since 2011. She had two seizures in the two weeks preceding her disappearance — one on August 30 and another one about a week prior. “She was weak,” Brenda said. “So we didn’t stay out long and I took her back home.”
Later that day, Brenda went back over to Sherrell’s. “I went to check on her at 7 o’clock that night. She was in the house with the kids and she asked me to take her somewhere,” she recalled. “And I’m like, ‘You already weak. I’m not gonna take you anywhere.’”
Phil Brown, Sherrell’s husband, told Dateline he had spent the day at his sister’s house and when he got home after 11 p.m., he found his wife sitting on the porch. He says he went in the house for 5 to 10 minutes while Sherrell and their 11-year-old granddaughter sat on the porch. “When I went back outside, she was gone,” he said.
According to Brenda, Sherrell had told the granddaughter “that she was going to get some help” and walked off the porch. “She told my [granddaughter] she’d be back,” Phil said. “I haven’t seen her since.”
Phil says he went looking for his wife as soon as he learned she’d left. “I didn’t see her nowhere,” he said, but he wasn’t worried at that point, figuring “she’d come back the next morning” as she had done that a few times before.
Dateline spoke with Sergeant James Darrington of the Petersburg Police Department who confirmed that Sherrell’s granddaughter was the last person to see her. Neither her family nor the Petersburg Police Department knows what Sherrell may have meant when she said she was going to get help.
Brenda thinks it’s possible her daughter had a medical emergency. “She had just been in the hospital twice,” she said. “We don’t know if she’s out somewhere passed out or if she had a seizure and nobody helped her or what.” Sherrell did not have her medication with her when she left. According to the Petersburg Police Department, Brenda Blackwell and Phil Brown reported Sherrell missing on Monday, September 4, 2023.
Sergeant Darrington told Dateline about the search efforts made by Petersburg PD, which partially consisted of doing ground searches. “She probably left on foot; there’s no indication that she got into any vehicles,” he said. “So, the span was limited to where she could’ve gone on foot.” Other efforts included checking surveillance footage, making calls to nearby facilities, presenting the case to missing person bureaus, and spreading the word online about Sherrell’s disappearance. “Those are the things we’ve done upfront,” Darrington said. He acknowledged the search has been difficult. “Most people have tools; they carry their cell phones, tablets, they use credit cards — they use things that we can track,” he said. “Those things were not taken with her, so it’s just a person moving.”
Authorities do not suspect foul play in Sherrell’s disappearance, and her family says they can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her. “I don’t want it — never want to make any speculation about what happened to her,” Brenda said. “I just want to find my daughter.” She thinks the Petersburg Police Department hasn’t done enough to make that happen. “It feels like they’re not concerned,” she said. “It’s obvious that [they] don’t have the staff or the intention of doing anything to look for my daughter.”
“We understand how she feels,” Sgt. Darrington said in response to Brenda’s concerns. “We’re doing all that we can with what’s afforded to us to try to bring her home. We do understand that it’s been a while, and so we’re just continuing to look forward — looking at different avenues and different strategies at this point.”
Phil Brown says he is perplexed by his wife’s disappearance. “Ain’t nobody heard from her. Ain’t nobody seen her — and my wife is well-known [around Petersburg],” he said. “It’s like she dropped off the face of the earth.”
But he hasn’t given up hope that Sherrell may one day come home. “The door is always open,” he said. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere ‘till she show up.”
Sherrell would be 53 years old today. She is 5’0” and weighs about 175 lbs. She has brown eyes and brown hair.
The family is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to Sherrell’s discovery.
Anyone with information about Sherrell Brown’s disappearance is asked to contact the Petersburg Police Department at 804-732-4222.
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