Saturday marked the oneyear anniversary of Justin Dewayne Baker’s disappearance when the vehicle in which he was riding plunged into the Arkansas River in Sequoyah County’s Paw Paw Bottoms area.
The search for Baker, who was 41 years old at the time, has been fruitless, but family members have not given up hope.
“We’re still searching,” Baker’s mother, Kelly Cox, said last week. “And God willing, in God’s time, we’re going to find something.
“We’ve had people — friends and other people — they have been on their ATVs or side-bysides, they’ve searched beyond the original search area, down that river and beyond where that point was, and in the sand. There’s people that have been searching all this time,” Cox said about the “outpouring that we’ve had with people willing to search.” Also involved in the search is the Morgan Nick Foundation, which provides a support network to Arkansas parents and families of missing children and adults.
Cox encourages those who may still want to search to “search away; any area you want to search. If you want to search, please search. Just because those areas didn’t produce anything before, they may produce something now.
“I’ve had friends of mine that did a grid search on horseback for a solid week down there, and they covered miles.”
The search that began 365 days ago was conducted from the Paw Paw Bottoms area six miles to the Garrison Avenue bridge, where Arkansas authorities took over, and searched to Barling.
But Baker remains missing.
“There’s been a lot of people drown in that river, but they’ve always been found. The bodies are found,” Cox said, still confounded that no trace has been discovered.
“Justin’s birthday was in September, and then we had the holidays that we’ve never spent without him. He’s forever 41. That’s a hard thing to take. It’s just like he’s disappeared into thin air, and that just don’t happen. It just don’t happen. You do not vanish.”
But for Cox, time has stood still.
“There’s some trace of him somewhere,” she’s sure. “After a year anniversary of this, but it’s still like it’s the first day. We’re dealing with it the best way we can, and just still trying to find him and find the truth.”
Although she’s relived her son’s final day over and over and over for the past year, trying to grasp why he can’t be found, she recalls those early hopeful days that dissolved into hopelessness.
“I was there for the whole thing, and they all told me that Justin was not there, that they would have found him.”
Closure, especially for Baker’s daughter, is what Cox seeks, as well as a final resting place for her son.
“I want to bring him home and put him to rest by his grandpa,” she said, “and his little girl will have some closure, because she doesn’t understand this at all, and there’s nothing we can do about that. She has made her own safe place.”
Just last week, Cox spoke to the OSBI, who assured her “the investigation is still ongoing; it’s very active. They’re still investigating this very heavily. They don’t want people to think that it’s over with.”
She said the OSBI, which is considering another search on the river, has counseled her to be patience. “Well, that’s one of the hardest things to do in a situation like that. I’m being patient, because I know the truth is going to come out.”
Cox hopes people don’t forget about her son. She wants to keep “Justin’s face and name out there, just on behalf of me, as his mother, and his little 8-year-old girl.”
“If anybody’s got any information at all — even if they don’t think it matters, big or small — contact Sequoyah County Sheriff ’s Office or OSBI.” She said the OSBI welcomes any information.
A surveillance camera video of when Baker left the Old Town Bar in Fort Smith with two new acquaintances still serves as a haunting and helpless reminder.
“I’ve got the last moments of his life — where he was at, they gave me the video,” Cox said, her voice wavering. “I’ve watched it over and over again. And when he walked out that door, you just scream, ‘Don’t go!’ … because he only had moments to live.”
Background
It was in the earlymorning hours of Jan. 24, 2025, that Baker went missing, touching off a massive search by land, water and air, as well as using search and rescue dogs. But authorities found no trace of the Army veteran and citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
Baker was last seen around 2:30 a.m. at the Fort Smith bar. That night, he accepted a ride home with a man and a woman he had just met.
But according to Oklahoma Highway Patrol reports, the Jeep in which the three were riding on the backroads near the Paw Paw Cemetery splashed into the river.
As the vehicle was sinking to the muddy bottom, the man and the woman were able to climb out of the vehicle, which became submerged 45 feet from shore in 11 feet of water.
Reports are that Baker was the last to emerge from the vehicle, and was said to have notified the others that he had exited the vehicle. But by the time the other two reached the shoreline, Baker was missing. The man and woman were transported to a local hospital where they were treated for their injuries.
The submerged vehicle was recovered from the river on Jan. 26, 2025, but weeks of searching by the OHP and other agencies found nothing.
