(RNN) – Police now believe the disappearance of Kiera Bergman, a 19-year-old who vanished in Phoenix earlier this month, is the result of foul play.
Multiple local outlets reported authorities’ updated assessment of the case. Bergman originally went missing Aug. 4.
She was last seen at her apartment that day, where she left after an argument with her boyfriend.
The boyfriend, 23-year-old Jon-Christopher Clark, is the last person to see her. After leaving the apartment, she sent texts to him and her roommate, Destiny Hall-Chand.
The text to Hall-Chand said she was meeting up with a man she’d met at a store a couple days earlier. Both the roommate and family members have said it was unlike Bergman to do something like that.
Bergman’s mother and father, Kiersten and Chris Bragg, have voiced their suspicions about Clark.
“We know that she didn’t just walk away. We knew that she was taken or something had happened to her,” Chris Bragg told The Arizona Republic newspaper. “We just don’t have any proof right now.”
Clark has adamantly denied any involvement, telling the paper he had “nothing to do with anything that’s going on” in an interview a week and a half ago.
He has been the subject of a police search, and was later arrested on unrelated identity theft and forgery charges after police found stolen IDs in his car, KNXV reported.
Clark was released from jail this weekend. Police do not consider him, or anyone else, a suspect.
Chris Bragg told KPHO last week that despite “no clues as to where she is” the family is “holding onto hope that our daughter may still be alive.”
Sgt. Vince Lewis of the Phoenix Police Department told the station that “unfortunately there are still unanswered questions” as they continue to try to piece together what happened.
“We never forget, we never give up,” Lewis said.
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