Missing man has family and friends baffled

Ursula Pallares was the last person known to have actually seen Mancilla. According to her, he was at her home until 4:30 a.m. Saturday. When he left, everything seemed fine. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened to her knowledge. Plans were made between the good friends to meet up again later that day for an out-of-town trip. But that was the last time anyone heard from or actually saw Mancilla.

“He told me he was tired and was going to go home,” said Pallares. “We were supposed to go to Savannah on Saturday, and it was already Saturday morning when he left my house, so he was going to call me that afternoon.”

That call never came. As the afternoon rolled around, Pallares decided to reach out to him.

“We would frequently talk via FaceTime,” she shared. “I FaceTime’d him around 12:30 p.m. to see if he was awake yet and to see what the plans were going to be, but he didn’t answer.” Pallares went on to admit that she didn’t think anything of it at first. After all, it had been the wee hours of the morning when he left her home. Maybe he’d just decided to sleep a little later. But as the hours passed by with still no word from him, she began to get concerned.

“I started to text him,” Pallares said. “He has ‘read receipt’ on his cell phone, so when he gets my messages, I know when he reads them. That never happened, so that’s when I started to really worry.”

Pallares described Mancilla as “a very reliable friend.” She said that whenever they made plans, he never backed out without giving notice, and he would never choose to just not respond to her calls or text messages. This wasn’t like him.

“That’s when I started reaching out to mutual friends to see if they’d heard from him. Nobody had,” Pallares reported. “I reached out to his cousin to see if he’d heard from him. I even called his job. He was supposed to be off on Saturday, but I thought that maybe he’d decided to pick up a shift—he would do that sometimes.”

Mancilla is employed at El J’s (El Jaliscience) as a server, and Pallares called the eatery and found out that he was not there either. Having still not gotten a return call or text, she convinced Mancilla’s cousin to go to his home to see if, by some chance, he was there and just not answering. But Mancilla was not at home and neither was his vehicle.

Pallares said, “I kept calling him all day Saturday, but after a while, my calls started going straight to voicemail, so his phone had died. We checked his Facebook page, and saw that the last time he logged in on Messenger was around 8 or 9 a.m. on Saturday morning. That was the last trace of him.”

By then, Pallares said that she was in panic mode. Others were telling her that she was overreacting and that Mancilla had probably met up with somebody and decided to just head to Atlanta or Savannah. “I kept telling them no,” Pallares said. “I knew Jesus wouldn’t go without me. We were supposed to go together. Everyone was trying to convince me that I was being paranoid.”

As Saturday came to an end, Pallares said that she went on to bed, but got very little sleep. When she woke up on Sunday and still hadn’t gotten any replies from Mancilla, there was no doubt in her mind that something was terribly wrong. “That’s when I reached out to his brother and told him that I hadn’t heard from Jesus,” she recalled. “But like the others, he was saying, ‘Well, he probably went to Atlanta or Savannah,’ and I told him the same thing that I told everyone else. Jesus wouldn’t go without me.”

According to Pallares, Mancilla’s brother agreed to meet at Mancilla’s place, and they forced their way into the house. “Everything seemed in order,” she said. “He had candles lit, and his dog was there alone, so he planned on coming back.”

In speaking with Mancilla’s neighbors, Pallares said they were told that Mancilla’s vehicle had been seen leaving the house early Saturday morning. To her knowledge, they didn’t actually see Mancilla and didn’t know if he left alone or if others were with him, but they did see his vehicle leave.

By this time, Pallares said that she was in tears. She then began trying to get some information from her friend’s brother about the vehicle, because I knew that Mancilla’s vehicle was registered in his brother’s name. “I told him that I needed the VIN number and the [license] plate so we could alert the authorities to be on the lookout for his car. He was technically missing,” she remarked.

It was around this same time that Mancilla’s brother remembered being told that a police officer had come to his own home. He hadn’t been home at the time, but his teenage daughter was there. Based on what Pallares was told, the daughter was afraid to go to the door when she saw it was the police, so she didn’t answer, and the officer eventually left. In calling the daughter about the incident, Pallares and Mancilla’s brother learned that the vehicle the police official drove was marked as belonging to the Byron Police Department.

“I called Byron PD and was told that they were doing a favor for Crawford County. They told me to call them. When I did, I was told that an officer would call me back.” Pallares went on to say, “They were taking too long to call back, so we just drove over to Crawford County. That’s when they told us that they found Jesus’ vehicle on somebody’s private property. It had been abandoned there.”

Pillares mentioned that because it is an ongoing investigation, police would not give her and Mancilla’s brother many details about what they had so far. They wouldn’t disclose whether the vehicle has been vandalized in anyway, but she said they did ask a few questions about whether it already had any cosmetic damage. They were also told that the vehicle was not locked and no keys or cell phone was found inside.

In addition, Pillares said, “We do know that the last time his cell phone was pinged, it was in that area. But again, they wouldn’t release much information.”

Pillares described herself and Mancilla’s family and other friends as completely baffled and extremely worried. She asked that if anyone has any information on the whereabouts of Jesus Mancilla to please contact Houston County Sheriff’s Office or Crawford County Police Department. According to Pillares, both departments are working to solve this missing persons case.

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