The father of missing 16-year-old Makayla Chang says his daughter is either being held against her will or she’s dead.
Kerry Chang is currently serving a sentence at the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre and has applied for a temporary absence so that he can help search for his daughter who disappeared almost a month ago.
“It’s been unbearable,” Kerry said in a phone interview. “I am on the verge of a mental collapse.”
The 48-year-old man is serving a six month sentence for a firearms related charge and has 32 days left behind bars.
“I just need to get out to be with my wife, she’s falling to pieces,” he said.
On Monday RCMP officers scoured two Nanaimo lots and searched the home where 53-year-old Steven Bacon was living and where Makayla stayed occasionally.
Mounties believed Makayla may have been travelling with Bacon and last week they tracked him down, but there was so sign of the Nanaimo teen.
“I met him one time when I told him to stay the hell away from my daughter,” Kerry said. “I had bad feelings then.”
The Vancouver Island man says he was told by investigators that Bacon is in Thunder Bay, Ont.
RCMP would not confirm that information with CTV News.
For the past 13 years Makayla was raised by her grandmother, but Kerry says the two had a close relationship.
“I feel very bad being in here right now, I feel that if I wasn’t in here this wouldn’t be happening because she would’ve been with me,” Kerry said.
Makayla was last seen in the Harbour City on March 17.
Mounties have received hundreds of tips in the investigation and say they follow up on each one.
Kerry says he’s holding on to hope that his daughter will be found alive.
“I just want her back so badly, God I’m so scared something bad has happened to her,” he added.
With files from CTV Vancouver Island's Jessica Lepp
