Upper Darby police searching for pregnant woman who vanished last week with her boyfriend

Betty Cellini has spent nearly a week hanging fliers, knocking on doors, and speaking with anyone who will listen. She won’t stop, she said Monday afternoon, until her missing daughter returns to her home in Upper Darby.

“I’m numb. I have no emotions,” Cellini said, holding back tears. “All I know is that at the end of the day, I want my daughter back.”

Dianna Brice was last seen March 30, after putting a load of laundry in the machines at K Laundromat in Yeadon with her mother. Brice, 21, left with her boyfriend, Justin Smith, and told Cellini she would be back later in the day, after Smith took her to pick up medication at a nearby pharmacy.

Neither she nor Smith, 23, made it home. Their cell phones have been turned off since March 30, and, hours after he drove away from the laundromat, Smith’s Ford Fusion was found in flames on 59th Street in Philadelphia. His wallet and keys were discarded nearby.

Upper Darby Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt said the case is frustrating. The couple, he said, “just dropped off our radar.”

“Both families said it’s not normal for them to leave without talking to any of their relatives,” Berhnardt said Monday.

Cellini is desperate for answers, given her daughter’s health issues: She takes medication daily for a life-threatening condition that her mother declined to identify. And she is 3½ months pregnant with Smith’s son.

Cellini said the last contact she had with Smith was a few hours after he picked up her daughter from the laundromat. Smith told her, she said, that the two had gotten into an argument, and that Brice had gotten out of the car at 57th Street and Springfield Avenue in West Philadelphia. Smith left her there, he told Cellini, and continued to drive.

When Cellini said she was going to file a missing person’s report, Smith got upset, she said, and hung up on her.

Now, Cellini is left with more questions than answers. And she’s struggling with what to tell Brice’s 4-year-old son, Amine.

“I can’t keep lying to this boy when he asks ‘Where’s Mommy?’ ” she said. “All I want is both of them to be found, for both of them to be safe at home.”

Smith’s father, Michael Kiser, said the disappearance is just as mysterious to him. He last saw his son early March 29, as he was leaving their home in Overbrook.

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“He’s a normal kid, and they’re just young people. Who knows what state of mind they were in?” Kiser said Monday. “I don’t know what happened. All I know right now is that he just disappeared.”

The families have enlisted the help of Kevin Ryan, a private investigator who works with relatives of missing people. Ryan said Monday that he has been assisting police in interviewing people who knew where Brice and Smith were the day before they disappeared, hoping to pick up on their current whereabouts.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Upper Darby police at 610-734-7677.