She Vanished After Getting Into A Car With An Unknown Woman And Hasn’t Been Seen Since 2016
Growing up, Brianna Hughes of Upper Burrell Township, Pennsylvania, had a bright future. She participated in volleyball, softball, and cheerleading as a child. Additionally, she was a gymnast who made her high school’s varsity squad as a freshman and competed at the state level.
However, at 16-years-old, Brianna broke her foot while completing a floor exercise and was forced to take a break from gymnastics. She was also prescribed prescription painkillers for her injury and ultimately became addicted.
Afterward, Brianna’s mother, Paula Gregg, claimed that she fell in with the “wrong crowd.” This led Brianna to transition to harder drugs over the course of her 14-year battle with addiction. Throughout this time period, Brianna also wound up with multiple criminal charges and jail stays.
“I prayed every day that there would be something that Brianna would do so that Brianna could go to jail – so that I could sleep at night because that’s when I knew where she was,” Paula said.
But, after 32-year-old Brianna was released from the Allegheny County jail in December 2016 and showed up at Paula’s home, that was the last time Paula ever got to see her daughter again.
It all began on December 15, 2016, when Brianna traveled to her mom’s house in Upper Burrell Township. Following her release from jail, Brianna claimed that she was going back to rehab. So, she showed up on Paula’s back porch.
Upon talking to Brianna, Paula gave her daughter clothes but no money. Then, while she was getting ready to leave, Paula noticed a car was waiting out front of her house with a female driver.
Paula didn’t recognize the woman, who reportedly had blonde, curly hair and was heavy-set. Nonetheless, Brianna got into the vehicle – an older model red car, possibly a Chevrolet Cavalier, with an unknown license plate – and was never heard from again.
Brianna had three children, whom she cared about very much, despite her struggles with addiction.
stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
“My daughter may have been an addict, but my daughter would beg for rides to try and go see her children,” Paula explained.
So, when Brianna failed to call her daughter, Elle, for her thirteenth birthday in March 2017, Paula had a gut feeling something was wrong and ultimately filed a missing person report with the Upper Burrell police.
Over the months after Brianna last left Paula’s home, she was reportedly spotted a couple of times. First, she was allegedly seen on Frankstown Road in Pittsburgh, where she is believed to have been living with her youngest daughter, Brayzee, and her daughter’s father.
Then, in mid-to-late February of 2017, she was last seen on East Liberty in Homewood. This was the last confirmed sighting of Brianna, and she never reached out for Elle’s birthday.
Since then, the circumstances surrounding Brianna’s disappearance have remained unclear, and she is still missing. According to Upper Burrell’s police chief Kenneth Pate, her case is “active but cold.”
“It’s probably intertwined with the company she was keeping. I don’t think she just up and relocated. In my mind, there’s definitely foul play,” Pate said.
“It’s one of those cases… that you just take with you. I just wish something would break.”
In the years since her daughter’s disappearance, Paula has held onto hope – especially for her grandchildren.
“Until we have closure, we’ll never give up that 1% hope. Not a day goes by that my Bree isn’t in my mind,” she said.
Paula also opened up about the community’s response to her daughter’s disappearance, particularly regarding Brianna’s struggles with addiction.
“A lot of people look at an addict who’s gone missing as, ‘Oh well, they’re just in the depths of addiction.’ Missing addicts are just people who went away to do drugs,” she explained.
“The last thing I said to my child was, ‘I love you, Brianna.’ That is the only thing that gives me some kind of solace.”
Brianna is five foot two, weighs about 110 pounds, and has brown hair and hazel eyes. She also has a tattoo of the word “breathe” on her upper chest and may use the name Winter.
If you have any information regarding her disappearance or whereabouts, you are urged to contact the Upper Burrell Police Department at (724) 335-0664.
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