Mekayla Bali was born on July 2, 1999, in Regina, the capital of the Saskatchewan Province in Canada. It is worth adding that the girl changed her name from Niebergall (her mother's maiden name) to Bali just seven months before her disappearance. The teenager lived with her mother, aunt, maternal grandmother, and two younger siblings in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada. Mekayla never met her father. Her mother, Paula Marie Bali, worked in the Ministry of Social Welfare and raised her children alone. The girl's maternal grandfather died in March 2016, just one month before her disappearance.
Mekayla was described by her relatives as a shy and calm teenager. She liked to play the violin and was also a member of a theater group in her high school. At the time of her disappearance, she was in the 11th grade. She was teased at school with acne at times, but before she went missing, she started taking a strong drug which brought some improvement. Bali was also getting better at the make-up she used to cover up skin imperfections. So she was well on her way to dealing with this problem that many teenagers grapple with. The girl also had a few friends who appreciated friendship with her. According to her mother, her eldest daughter was not a risky child. She also did not run away from home earlier.
The 16-year-old girl was about 157 cm tall and weighed 56 kg at the time of her disappearance. Her natural hair color was red, but the girl often dyed it, usually choosing different shades of blonde. She had blue eyes and a pale complexion. The distinguishing features include the aforementioned acne, a small birthmark on the chin, a few chickenpox scars on the forehead, self-mutilation marks on the thigh, and protruding front teeth. Bali also wore glasses at times.
When she was last seen she was wearing a turquoise/mint scarf, jeans, and a 3/4 length purple coat. Her wavy blonde hair was loose. She also put on glasses that day.
Bali's high school friends told reporters that in the days leading up to her disappearance, the teenager had mentioned several places she wanted to visit. Mekayla is also reported to have told friends that he has $ 5,000 in his bank account. However, the police later confirmed that this was not true.
On Monday, April 11, the day before her disappearance, the 16-year-old texted a friend asking for a ride to her local TD bank the next morning. She also contacted this bank several times that day and eventually transferred $ 25 to her account. In the evening, Mekayla sent messages to several other friends. She wrote that she was dissatisfied with something and needed help. However, she did not specify what exactly was going on.
Based on the testimony of witnesses and checking hundreds of hours of video footage, investigators were able to recreate most of Mekayla's activities on the day she disappeared. As a result, we have a fairly detailed schedule for the last hours before your disappearance.
On Tuesday, April 12, at 6:41 a.m., Bali sent another text to the friend mentioned earlier, asking again for a ride to the bank. Her friend refused, explaining that the facility was still closed. According to the missing mother, nothing unusual happened that morning. As usual, the teenager's grandmother took her to school. This happened between 8:10 and 8:20. Monitoring recorded a girl putting a binder in her school locker at 8:21 am. Mekayla exited the building through the back entrance at around 8:30.
She was then spotted by the camera as she walked southeast along the railroad tracks. An employee of a nearby pawnshop, Terry's Pawn and Bargain, later told police that between 8:40 and 8:50 a 16-year-old tried to pawn a silver ring. Due to its low value, the man refused.
Moments later, between 8:50 and 8:55, the girl was seen in the aforementioned TD Bank. She then withdrew $ 55 from her account. The surveillance footage then shows a teenager walking down Broadway at 9am talking on the phone. However, this call did not appear in the call log. So it is assumed that the girl must have used an application such as Messenger or WhatsApp.
Around 9:10 am, the cameras caught Mekayla entering the "Tim Hortons" / "Wendy" restaurant. She bought something to drink there and sat down at a table. You can see in the recordings that she is disassembling her phone and then putting it back together. It is suspected that it could have replaced the SIM card in it at that time. At 9:23 am the teenager left the restaurant, but almost immediately re-entered the restaurant by a different exit to leave again.
Over the next 25 minutes, she was spotted by several cameras nearby. At 9:49 am the girl reappeared at the restaurant. This time she sat down at another table. Over the next 20 minutes, the teenager used the phone multiple times. She sent text messages and made several phone calls. At 10:12, she wrote to a friend that she needed help. After a few minutes, she contacted her friend again. The SMS was: "Whatever, I've already dealt with it."
Then we see her leaving the restaurant once again, only to re-enter soon. At 10:43 am Mekayla walked over to the old lady and started a short conversation. The police managed to reach this woman. She told investigators that she had been asked for help in renting a hotel room, but refused to do so. After the call ended, Bali used the phone again and quickly left the restaurant, this time finally.
The cameras then spotted the 16-year-old girl at 10:45 am as she walked west down Broadway Street East. Then she turned and headed south on 7th Avenue. She quickly turned away, however, and continued west Broadway Street East until she was no longer in sight of the cameras.
For another hour, she did not appear on any monitoring material. However, she was remembered by an employee of the STC bus depot (which closed in 2017). Bali asked him when the next bus to Regina was due. When she found out that it would be 5:00 PM, she did not buy a ticket and then left the station. According to the employee, this happened between 10:00 and 12:00. Based on the monitoring recordings, it can be assumed that it was most likely between 11:00 and 11:45.
At 11:35 the teenager sent another text to her friend: "See you at lunch". At 11:59, Mekayla returned to her high school, but only met two other students in the school cafeteria. They then confirmed that she had told them about the bus trip to Regina on vacation. As it turned out later, the family of the 16-year-old did not have such plans. Cameras were recorded at 12:03 pm that the girl had left school.
The next time she was seen ordering lunch at the Trail Stop Restaurant. It was connected to the aforementioned bus depot and was closed at the same time. According to eyewitnesses, Bali left the restaurant between 1:00 PM and 1:45 PM. Nobody has seen her since then. It also did not appear on any of the surveillance footage. The police also checked that she had not boarded any of the buses at the station that day.
The family noticed the teen's disappearance on the afternoon of April 12, 2016, when her grandmother went to pick her up from school. When she found out that her granddaughter had been absent from school all day, she contacted Mekayla's mother. Initially, the women were looking for a 16-year-old girl themselves. After several hours of unsuccessful attempts, in the evening of the same day, they reported her missing.
As it was later found out, the missing person's phone was turned off at 6:51 am the next morning. According to the police, Bali has not used any of her social media accounts since then. One possible exception occurred three months later when a Snapchat message sent to her by one of her friends was marked open. However, it was not possible to determine whether someone actually displayed the message or whether it was an application error. Police also confirmed that no activity had been recorded in Mekayla's bank account. The girl also did not have a passport with her, which would make it much more difficult for her to leave the country.
The case was initially handled by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) of Yorkton. On April 14, 2016, the public was asked to help find the teenager. After three weeks, the police transferred the files to the General Investigations Section (GIS), a special unit investigating the most serious crimes. On July 21, three months after her disappearance, the RCMP intensified the search. The girl has since been searched for in three Canadian provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. In December, this area was extended to the entire territory of the country.
The police took the matter seriously from the very beginning (which is not often the case in similar cases). The focus was on the verification of surveillance camera recordings provided by local companies. Dozens of interviews with potential witnesses were also conducted. Telephone operators were also approached.
In August 2017, the police carried out a three-day search in a wooded area near the missing person's high school. This action, however, did not lead to a breakthrough in the case. The police never announced the suspect but tried to reach out to someone who might have had important information.
It was the man seen by the witnesses leaving the Trail Stop restaurant with Mekayla. He was described as having a stocky build, muscular shoulders, dark hair, and a large, prominent tattoo with a fiery cross on his forearm. The man eventually reported to the police, but it was established that he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Bali.
Several Internet friends of the 16-year-old were also located and nearby hotels were checked. None of these actions has solved the mystery. In 2019, investigators began publishing surveillance footage in the hope that it would bring new information from people who saw the missing person that day.
There were at least a few theories about what could have happened to the girl. Here are some of the most common ones.
1) Escape
Police consistently treated Mekayla's disappearance as a missing person and said there was no evidence that she had been a victim of a crime. The teenager's high school friends were of the same opinion. Admittedly, some posts on Bali's social media profiles indicated that she was unhappy and planned to get away from her life so far.
The girl's mother, however, indicated that these entries were very old and out of date at the time of her daughter's disappearance. Paula Bali also added that she initially thought her daughter might have escaped. She quickly changed her mind when she realized that her acne medications, as well as the emergency money she kept at home (and which Mekayla knew about), had remained intact.
2) Trafficking in human beings
In 2019, a government report was published detailing the problem of human trafficking in Saskatoon. In particular, it was to apply to large cities such as Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Regina. Yorkton, the place where the teenager lived and disappeared, is somewhere in the middle. Accordingly, the girl's mother has said several times that she is concerned that her daughter may have become a victim of human trafficking.
3) The perpetrator whom the girl met online
The 16-year-old often used several social networks where she chatted with people, often using many different aliases. On March 1, 2016 (a little over a month before her disappearance), Bali wrote on Snapchat and one of her Instagram accounts: “I'm looking for friends on Snapchat because I don't have them in real life. Add me…". For this reason, it was hypothesized that Mekayla thus met the person who was involved in her disappearance.
Investigators have put a lot of effort into obtaining information about her online history, but US privacy laws have caused significant delays in obtaining this data. The girl's mother also supported these efforts by handing over all the access to her daughter's accounts she had.
Kik, the messaging app, in particular, has been cited by friends of the missing person and investigators as a cause for concern. Kik was accused of providing insufficient parental controls and offering anonymity to people who might have malicious intent. Mekayla's friends also admitted that they didn't know much about who she was contacting on the Internet.
Personally, I consider the latter hypothesis to be the most probable. This is evidenced by the messages and phone calls the girl had on the day of her disappearance. We know that she did not talk to any relatives or friends, so it must have been a person who was not known to the teenager's immediate surroundings. Also, the alleged replacement of the SIM card could indicate that Bali was doing it all in secret.
Perhaps she had received such instructions from a stranger. It is also puzzling that she wanted to rent a hotel room. Probably there she was supposed to meet the person she was talking to on the network. Unfortunately, despite a lot of evidence in the form of monitoring recordings, testimonies of witnesses, or telephone billings, it has not been possible to find out the truth to this day.
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