Friends, family hold out hope for answers in disappearance of Pittsburgh artist

A Pittsburgh artist has been missing for one year, and family and friends say they are still holding out hope for answers.

Tonee Turner was last seen Dec. 30, 2019. On that day, she went to Dobra Tea on Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill and later got on a bus to head toward Hazelwood, where she lived.

Family members have said a bus driver saw her get off at her typical stop on Giddings Street.

She was in contact with loved ones at about 6 p.m., at which point she might have been in the Homestead area, authorities have said.

“It’s been extremely hard,” Tuner’s sister, Sydnee Turner, told Tribune-Review news partner WPXI-TV. “It’s unfathomable.”

Some of her belongings were later found on the Homestead Grays Bridge.

“She is irreplaceable,” her sister told the TV station. “Very fun, very loving, very knowledgeable and very kind.”

She said she has “no inkling” as to what happened to her sister but hopes she’s “safe somewhere and happy, and that nothing atrocious happened to her,” according to WPXI.

The investigation remains open.

In the weeks after her disappearance, her sister and friends described her to NNPA Newswire as caring and a lover of the arts.

“If you’ve gone to concerts in Pittsburgh, you’ve probably seen Tonee in front, dancing her little heart away,” friend Akayla Bennett told the news wire at the time. “Whether she was alone or with friends, that didn’t matter to her when it came to dancing.”

Here is the flyer they are passing out. pic.twitter.com/fe8V4H0vYc

— Ben Schmitt (@bencschmitt) January 2, 2020

Turner was 22 when she disappeared, missing her 23rd birthday on June 10. She is around 5 feet, 2 inches tall and 130 pounds. She has brown eyes. When she was last seen, she had black hair that was about chin-length.

She was a full-time metal fabricator at Studebaker Metals in Braddock, according to the TV station, and was a ceramics teacher at the Carnegie Library of Braddock.