Prisma Reyes: Five years since Dallas mom disappeared

(NewsNation) — Detectives searching for Prisma Reyes have plenty of evidence about her last day in Dallas, but the 26-year-old mother remains missing five years after what appears to have been one of her worst days.

It was Reyes’ only child, Dominick, who set the search for Reyes in motion. On April 17, 2019, the 6-year-old boy’s babysitter alerted police in Mesquite, Texas, that Reyes was late picking up her son.

“That was a little out of the ordinary for Prisma,” said Sgt. Dustan Barrett.

Prisma Reyes misses son’s pickup

Barrett and his team were on the case quickly, since the babysitter called just two hours after Reyes should have picked up her child.

The team got more information shortly after the call.

“We were talking about the case,” Barrett said. “We were then notified that the Dallas Police Department had located Prisma’s Jeep.”

Dan Fuchs is Reyes’ stepfather, the only father figure she ever knew. He was candid about the day his daughter disappeared.

Prisma Reyes’ ‘worst day ever’

The day started with an argument between a few women at a used car lot in Dallas where Reyes was newly employed.

“The altercation that morning was apparently, this one lady felt the parking spot closest to the building was hers,” Fuchs said.

At lunch, Reyes went to the E-Bar Tex Mex restaurant where she met up with an ex-boyfriend. The pair left together, but Barrett said Reyes returned to drink alone.

“Talking with different patrons of the bar, she had a bit of the disturbance there at the bar where I believe they cut her off from drinking,” Barrett said. “She got a little upset, spilled a drink and then left.”

Cameras caught Reyes driving her white Jeep, rolling over a curb while turning. NewsNation obtained documents from the road rage incident that happened next.

At 5:05 p.m., three women called 911 to report a suspect wearing a red polo in a white Jeep Cherokee “pulled out a black handgun, cycled the side and pointed it at their car.”

‘Road rage doesn’t make sense’: Former private investigator

Kaylee Palmer, a former private investigator, has spent hundreds of hours investigating the case. She said the road rage incident doesn’t make sense to her, given Reyes’ history of serving in the National Guard.

Palmer also tracked Reyes’ driving that day and said it appeared there was a phone call that coincided with Reyes making a U-turn and heading back toward Dallas.

On that same street, cameras also caught Reyes parking and blocking an alley at her ex-boyfriend’s apartment complex. The footage shows her running through the car gate, appearing unsteady as she waits for the elevator.

“She seems a little bit intoxicated, she’s stumbling around, she has the look of somebody that has had a few drinks and just doesn’t have all of her mental faculties about her,” Barrett said.

The last shot of Reyes shows her after she’s traveled to a higher floor and is seen crying.

“It’s real grainy and real fuzzy, but the clothing and everything seems to match what she was wearing,” Barrett said. “So, we believe that’s the last video we have of her.”

There’s no footage of Reyes leaving the building, leading investigators to look into her ex-boyfriend. A year before, Reyes had dropped domestic violence charges against him.

Prisma Reyes’ ex has an alibi

But the ex had an alibi.

“He wasn’t there,” Barrett said. “We have him on video leaving several minutes before she arrives and we know where he went. We have him on video at several locations.”

Fuchs told NewsNation he thinks there may have been more going on than Reyes having had a few drinks.

“Her demeanor and everything else, she wasn’t intoxicated. It was more like she was drugged,” he said.

Reyes didn’t take her gun with her into the building. She left it in the illegally parked Jeep, visible in the front seat. That car belonged to a man who police say Reyes was “quasi-involved with.”

But Barrett said police have no evidence suggesting he was involved in Reyes’ disappearance.

Exploring additional theories

Fuchs said in addition to the car dealership, Reyes had two other jobs, working as a paralegal and as a dancer at local clubs. He’s wondered if someone she met as a dancer could have been involved in her disappearance.

”Prior to that day … one of the managers at one of the clubs that she worked at had told me that she had called him one day because she had felt like she was being followed,” he said.

Another man connected to Reyes was Dominick’s biological father, Arturo Garza Jr. He and Reyes split before Dominick was born, and he has said he was out of state at the time Reyes disappeared. Police said his alibi is “supported by current evidence.”

Garza said he just wants to support his son.

“It kind of kills me inside, because I don’t know if he copes with it, he doesn’t ask for his mom and he just keeps it to himself,” he said. “I don’t try to talk about it much because I let him cope in his own way. I think that’s the best thing to do, let him express his emotions whenever he’s ready.”

Did Prisma Reyes walk away?

While Garza thinks it’s possible Reyes just walked off, her family disagrees. Fuchs also recalls getting some very strange phone calls after Reyes disappeared.

”About a year and a half ago, I was getting calls from a little Puebla just south of Mexico City. And it’d be all different, most of the time be 9, 10 o’clock at night.  Sometimes it would be 1, 2 o’clock in the morning,” he said.

Fuchs said he will never stop working to find the little girl he so proudly raised. Not just for himself, but for his growing grandson who deserves answers.

“If I’m on my deathbed, so I can say, ‘Well, Dominick, I’ve done everything I could do,'” he said.

Barrett told NewsNation that in 2019, some of the apartment building’s exits did not have cameras. While technology that existed four years ago gave them some clues, he said it’s going to take someone with additional information coming forward to solve the case.