Friday, 27 March 2009

Search continues for former Unique Living resident

Shelby Star

Thursday, Mar 26 2009
David Allen

Will answers to Mouy Tang's disappearance soon surface after some technological intervention?

Family members hope so.

Mouy, a 46-year-old native of Cambodia and former Unique Living resident, was last seen Sept. 3 near Burns High School in Lawndale. Subsequent searches haven't unearthed a single lead.

An imaging team from Indiana has the capability to shine a colored light on the world - or at least the areas they take pictures of.

Quyhn Tang, Mouy's sister-in-law, said the team will take several aerial shots from where Mouy originally went missing.

From there, they'll color-code the findings to see if anything pops up.

The color imagery software was developed in Europe and is not available for regular public use, Quyhn said.

"Supposed to be already done or this week coming up," Quyhn said.

Attempts to contact the team for comment were unsuccessful.

Quyhn was told in January that officials drove out to search for Mouy, a diabetic, around 15 minutes after they realized she was gone from Unique Living.

Quyhn said that while Mouy couldn't walk well, she was supposedly long gone when employees began searching.

"Apparently they couldn't locate her," Quyhn said in a previous interview. "It might have taken her 30 minutes to get to that intersection (of Philadelphia Road and Stagecoach Trail where Mouy was last seen)."

The numbers just didn't add up.

Family members recently accepted what some professionals suggested after the last search, Quyhn said.

"She was picked up instead of wandered off," Quyhn said. "We came to terms with it. They did another 5-mile search. Thirty-two people from all over. Nothing."

But the imaging technology could reveal what human eyes haven't until this point.
"They have to have everything back and analyzed by April 15," Quyhn said.

Following the imaging, members of the South Carolina-based S.T.A.R.R. team will be called back for another search based on the new information.

Earlier this month, an independent review panel in Raleigh recommended fining Unique Living, the now-defunct adult care home, $50,000 for three major violations cited in July 2008 by the Division of Health Service Regulation Adult Care Licensure Section.

All three penalties against Unique Living are Type A violations, defined as those that result in death or serious physical harm or the strong likelihood that would occur.

"When you open a facility like this, you are responsible and this should show every facility that they will be held accountable," Quyhn said at that time.

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