Jan 31, 2009 7:44 am US/Eastern
Is St. John's Student Missing Or AWOL?
Erica Desai, 19, Disappeared 9 Days Ago: Surveillance Video Appears To Show Her, But Family Disagrees
Reporting
Lou Young
QUEENS (CBS) ―
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Erica Desai has been missing since Jan. 20.
CBS
There was concern on the campus at St. John's University in Queens on Friday night as freshmen students wondered where their classmate is.
Erica Desai, 19, of North Carolina came back to New York from the winter break but didn't return to her biology and medicine classes.
"She's a really sweet, sweet girl," SJU student Gabby Barshay said. "I was friends with her and I had classes with her so it's really strange to see a classmate go missing."
The distraught family of the physician's assistance major was huddled with detectives Friday night trying to figure out what happened.
Desai was last seen a week ago Tuesday in the parking lot near her dormitory on the St. John's campus. Her cousin told police he picked her up at LaGuardia Airport, drove her to school and saw her walking toward Donovan Hall.
She apparently never got to her room.
That was nine days ago. The missing persons case, which opened Thursday, revealed someone used Desai's ATM card at a Bank of America branch at 44th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan the day after she disappeared.
The video images from the ATM camera shows a girl apparently of Indian descent, like Erica, and an older black male withdrawing about $150. Police want to speak to the people in the image and although police won't say it they think that's her at the bank. Her family insists it is not.
"It was not her, it was somebody else," said Suresh Desai, the missing woman's uncle. "Well, we saw the video and somebody else withdraw the money from her account. We are worried to death. We don't know what happened and we want the answers."
Whether she's a victim or simply astray, police at the 107th Precinct in Flushing are looking for answers.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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