‘I truly believe someone here knows something’
WINFIELD TWP — Only a few vehicles pass 1136 Cornplanter Road during the hour each year that Janice McKinney and her close friends and family return to her former home, but any one of the passersby might remember something about McKinney’s missing daughter, Cherrie Mahan.
Cherrie was 8 years old when she disappeared from that street at around 4 p.m. Feb. 22, 1985, and each year, McKinney returns to the street for a prayer vigil.
Although she has gone 39 years now without answers, McKinney said Thursday, Feb. 22, she still believes someone with information on her daughter eventually will come forward.
“I truly believe someone here knows something,” she said. “Me not knowing is probably the hardest thing.”
Cherrie was a third grader at the former Winfield Elementary School in the South Butler County School District, now the Knoch School District.
McKinney said Cherrie was a talkative girl, and told her mother she planned to come home after school, eat dinner and go to a friend’s house.
According to Max DeLuca, the detective with state police’s criminal investigation unit who handles Cherrie’s case, the school bus arrived back on Cornplanter Road just after 4 p.m.
“Cherrie exited her school bus with three other children,” he said. “The stop was approximately 100 yards from her residence.”
After she got off the bus, Cherrie was never seen again. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, she was last seen wearing a gray coat, blue denim skirt, blue leg warmers and beige boots.
McKinney said she and her husband Leroy, Cherrie’s stepfather, both recalled hearing the school bus from their residence up the hill.
McKinney said her family moved to Cornplanter Road from Saxonburg, where Cherrie grew up. Shortly after the move, she said her daughter kept saying someone was looking in at her from outside the window.
This resulted in her daughter requesting to move bedrooms, according to McKinney.
Witnesses reported seeing a blue or green van traveling behind Cherrie’s school bus as well as a blue-colored sedan in the area. The vehicle operators have not been identified or located, according to DeLuca.
On Thursday, McKinney gathered with five loved ones to pray for answers about Cherrie. She said despite many misleading tips and hope that has turned to heartbreak, she still has hope for her daughter.
“Some good things have happened,” McKinney said. “I still find joy in the world.”
McKinney and her friends had plans to make trinkets at Three Rivers Art Glass in Saxonburg following the vigil. Trista Smith, a longtime friend of McKinney, said at the vigil that they would probably create window sill decorations with purple glass — Cherrie’s favorite color.
Smith also said at the vigil that McKinney has remained a positive person through the turmoil of searching for her missing daughter.
“She would give you the shirt off her back, her shoes,” Smith said. “All she wants is her daughter.”
