Body recovered from lake believed to be missing Mrs. Dallas pageant queen
"I have screamed and hollered ever since I heard."
A body matching a missing pageant queen in Texas has been found in a lake during a police search for the victim.
Lashun Massey of Irvine went missing on April 27 after going out for her morning walk. On Thursday investigators recovered a body in Lake de Claire, near where she was last seen. It is unclear if the body is Massey, Star-Telegram reports. The 38-year-old wife and mother was wearing a black hoodie and checkered pajama pants when witnesses saw her walking on the edge of the lake and asked if she was OK, according to KTVT.
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“They had asked her if she was okay and she said she was, so they carried about their business,” firefighter Robert Keeker said on the first day of the search. “After that, they said they saw her exit the water and then we later received a tip someone else had seen her walking in the water again a couple hours later.”
Jeff Massey, LaShun’s husband, alerted police when she did not come home in time to get her two elementary-aged sons ready for virtual school, KXAS reported. Jeff spoke with CBS 11 News on April 28 and said his wife typically takes a 7:00 a.m. walk by the lake and she always checks in — but her Tuesday routine was unusual as he didn’t hear from her and became concerned.
“So at about 7:15 [a.m.], I got a little nervous and I texted her. I gave her a call and she didn’t answer so at the time I found our security guard down here and said that they had seen her or somebody over in the canal,” he said.
The Irving police worked with the Texas Department of Public Safety dive team to recover the body from the lake on Thursday in the Las Colinas area of Irving. The body has been sent to the Dallas County Medical Examiner to be identified.
“We did receive different tips and different investigative leads that made us want to come back out here and do a dive team in assistance with a sonar to try and verify that up in the canal ways here of Lake de Claire and the body of water… to double check just to make sure that we had done our due diligence,” said Irving Police Department Public Information Officer Robert Reeves at a news conference.
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“I can say that the person recovered (had) clothing (that) does match that of our missing person’s identification that she was last seen wearing,” said Officer Reeves. The body was sent to the Dallas County Medical Examiner to be identified.
Massey, the reigning Mrs. Dallas, was set to compete to keep her title later this year. According to her website, she was a civil engineer, authored the autobiography, “The Face of the New Engineer,” and the program manager for research at the University of Texas at Dallas. She also owns an environmental engineering firm.
“We really don’t understand exactly what happened,“ Mary Ross, Lashun’s mother, told CBS 11. “She was my only daughter.”
Ross said she has “screamed and hollered” after learning about the body found in the lake.
“I don’t know how to feel right now. I have screamed and hollered ever since I heard it on Tuesday but I know God is good and is going to take care of our family,” said Ross.
“She was very afraid of the water. Plus she did not know how to swim. There’s no way she would have played or gotten your the water,“ Ross added. “We really haven’t gotten any answers but I think God we have found our daughter so we can all have closure.“
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