More info on the timeline of the day leading up to Summer's disappearance.
ROGERSVILLE – “If you took her, just bring her back. You don’t even have to tell me that you did it. Just bring her back. Say that you found her
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Candus recalled June 15, the day Summer disappeared.
Candus’ mother – also named Candus, but who’s nicknamed Candy – needed to see a doctor in Kingsport about her aching knee.
“We went to Gatlinburg and the boys accidentally kept tripping over her sore knee,” Candus said. “She had an artificial knee replaced. And if you twist it the wrong way, it pops out and it hurts really bad. And she couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t stop hurting after a while, so I took her to the ER that morning.”
After taking Candy to Holston Valley, Candus and Summer went to visit some family friends in Kingsport. “They invited me over to sit at their house while I waited for my mom to get done so we weren’t sitting in the hot truck. So, I went over there,” Candus said.
“I was sitting and mom called me to come get her,” said Candus, adding that the 15-year-old son of her friend asked to go along. “I went and picked her up, and then we drove all the way across town and dropped her prescription off. They said it’d be about 30 minutes at the most.
“So, we were like, well instead of sitting here in the car where it’s hot — it was baking hot – we’ll just go to Warrior’s and let Summer swim for a little while. Like I said, we weren’t even planning on going swimming or fishing or anything,” Candus said.
So, they went to Warrior’s Path State Park and let Summer and the boy swim in the cove just south of the park’s horse stables. “I figured 15 or 20 minutes in the water, you know, run a little bit of energy out instead of sitting in the truck,” Candus said.
One of the last videos shot of Summer before her disappearance is of her swimming in that cove. There has been much speculation in social media about what happened next. According to accounts, Summer went under water and the boy dove in to save her. Candus said that didn’t happen. In the video, Summer is seen splashing in the lake, then stands up to reveal it’s only about waist-deep.
“That boy lied on everything that happened,” Candus said. “Because the place I was at, there was no rocks. She didn’t slide on no rocks and fall in the water. She wasn’t under the water for 20 seconds or more like he said. That was just a bunch of lies he made up. I don’t know why he did that.
“There was no incident at all. That don’t even make no sense why he would even say that. And the video that I took is the same, exact time that they were in the water playing,” Candus said. If Summer had fallen, “she’d jump right back up. That’s what don’t make no sense to me, at all. There’s so many rumors and lies going around, none of it even makes sense. Couch Police, that’s what I call them.”
After the swim, it was back across Fort Henry Drive to Walgreen’s, then a quick stop at a grocery store.
“We went back and picked up my mom’s prescription and went to Price Less. I dropped off (the boy) after Price Less and we come home. And then me and my mom – the boys were in watching Youtube like they always do – my mom says, ‘let’s re-arrange and plant the flowers.’ She goes, ‘Well, we know the boys aren’t going to help us. I know Summer will.’ So, I yelled for Summer. She was in the house with the boys. She comes out and she was planting flowers with us,” Candus said.
The flowers were put in planters next to Grandma Candy’s camper, with Summer handling some of the tasks, Candus said.
“She put all the rocks on top, put chaste in there. She did all the rocks herself. We went in to grandmother’s after we were done. She asked Grandma for a piece of candy. Grandma gave her a piece of candy. She told me she wanted to go back over with her brothers, so I literally walked her” halfway between the camper and the house, Candus said.
“I watched her go in the door and I could see her brothers at the kitchen table. When she went in, I walked over and yelled at the boys, I said, ‘Watch Summer. I’ll be right back. I’ve got to fix Mom’s knee brace.’ I was standing right there (at the camper). I was over there fixing it. Literally, you can see my house from the (camper) door. She did not walk back out that front door.”
Candus estimated it took “maybe two to five minutes to fix Mom’s brace.”
“When I got done, I come back in. I asked the boys, ‘Where’s your sister?’ They said, ‘She went downstairs to play with her toys, Mom.’ I said okay and I went and I hollered down the steps. I always holler for them down there. And she didn’t holler back. I said, ‘Are you sure she’s down there?’ They said, ‘Yeah, she just went down there.’
“So, I went down there and I searched. I looked everywhere I could. Then I went through the house and I kept calling for her, yelling for her, everything. I came out here (outside) yelling for her, everything else, and she was nowhere. So, I called Don because I was freaking out,” Candus said.
Don, Summer’s father, was installing drywall at a job site in Jonesborough.
“I said, ‘I can’t find Summer. Get home now,’” Candus recalled. “He was like, ‘Call 9-1-1.’ So, I dropped my phone because I had to run over and get Mom’s phone and dial 9-1-1, because her AT & T phone is the only one that works out here to call 9-1-1. So, I called them, and told them what’s goin’ on.
“Before the cops even came out, I went down and told my neighbors, ‘Summer is missing, will you help me look?’ just in case she did wander off. But I knew in the back of my mind, she’s never wandered off. She never went nowhere without me. She’ll ask me to do something before she even goes and does it. And she’s scared to go in the woods herself because we’ve told her time and time (again) because of the bears and snakes,” Candus said.
“I sent the older boys down through the creek. If they’ve got a walkie-talkie and their buck knife, they can go down through there. I sent all them searching and I went out in my mom’s truck and went all the way down by the church, then went all the way down the (other) way and I didn’t see nobody even out and about,” Candus said.
“Then I went all the way back in the holler as far as the truck can go and I didn’t see nothing back in there, either. When I was coming back up out of the holler, the cops were coming up in my driveway. So, I just followed them up in here. I don’t recall if (Don) was here before the police got here or if he was here at the same time they showed up,” said Candus.
“We searched everywhere we could possibly search. They were out here for three or four days straight searching 5,000 square (acres). They searched all this mountain terrain all the way down through here. They busted into my shed down there and destroyed it,” she said.
“What really gets me is when they were searching for her, why didn’t they make the neighbors let them go in their sheds and buildings and stuff? Why didn’t they make them unlock it? Some people were like, ‘No, you can’t search my property.’ Why would you do that? There’s a missing kid. Why would you not let them search? It just don’t make no sense,” said Candus, who grew frustrated at times with the searchers.
“They looked in every vehicle I had, underneath every vehicle I had. They opened that tote right there and all it’s got in it is a bunch of crafts and stuff. You couldn’t even fit nobody in that if you wanted to. They opened that like seven times. They even went so small to look in my mom’s sewer tank of her camper. That’s hole’s like” an inch-diameter circle, Candus gestured with her thumb and index finger. “How did you get that four-foot baby in that hole?” she said.
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