Four years ago, Lacy Murillo answered a call from an unknown number only to be informed by a detective with the Lane County Sheriff’s Department that her brother, Manuel Bayya, was missing. Family and community members are organizing a rally in his honor on March 27 at 11:30 a.m. in Eugene, Oregon.
“Manuel going missing really changed my life,” Murillo said. “I got clean and sober a month after he went missing. It just made me see things different and him going missing made me crazy. I used to be numb, but I couldn’t do enough drugs to be numb to that.”
Bayya, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, was 47 years old when he went missing on March 17, 2022. A father of two, he loved hunting, fishing and riding his motorcycle.
“He was fun. He was the life of the party,” Murillo said. “He liked making people laugh. And he just had the best smile.”…