Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings

The Disappearance of Asha Degree

Asha Jaquilla Degree (born August 5, 1990) went missing at the age of nine from Shelby, North Carolina, United States. In the early morning hours of February 14, 2000, for reasons unknown, she packed her book bag, left her family home north of the city and began walking along nearby North Carolina Highway 18 despite heavy rain and wind. Several passing motorists saw her; when one turned around at a point 1.3 miles (2.1 km) from her home and began to approach her, she left the roadside and ran into a wooded area. In the morning, her parents discovered her absence. No one has seen her since.

An intensive search that began that day led to the location of some of her personal effects near where she was last seen. A year and a half later, her book bag, still packed, was unearthed from a construction site along Highway 18 north of Shelby in Morganton. At the point where she ran into the woods, a billboard now stands appealing for help finding her. Her family hosts an annual walk from their home to the billboard to draw attention to the case.

While the circumstances of Degree's disappearance at first seemed to suggest she was running away from home, investigators could not find a clear reason she might have done so, and she was younger than most children who do so. They have speculated that she might have been abducted instead. The case has drawn national media attention. In 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) joined state and county authorities in a reopened investigation, offering a reward for information that could help solve the case.

Background

Harold and Iquilla Degree married on Valentine's Day in 1988. Their son, O'Bryant, was born a year later, and their daughter Asha was born in 1990. The Degrees raised both children in their house on Oakcrest Drive in a residential subdivision amidst a generally rural area north of Shelby, North Carolina, on the western edge of the Charlotte metropolitan area. Both worked regular jobs nearby. The children let themselves in after school, where their parents expected that they would either be doing their homework or finished with it by the time they returned.

They made sure their children were insulated from outside influences and had a life centered around their extended family, church, and school. The Degrees did not have a computer in the house. "[E]very time you turned on the TV there was some pedophile who had lured somebody's child away, via the Internet," Iquilla recalled in a 2013 Jet interview. Iquilla said Asha handled this well; she was cautious, shy and content mostly to stay within the limits her parents set. "She was scared to death of dogs," she recalled years later. "I never thought she would go out of the house."

Asha was in fourth grade at nearby Fallston Elementary School going into a three-day weekend on the second week of February 2000. The Cleveland County Schools were closed on Friday, February 11, while the Degrees still had to work; the children spent the day at their aunt's house in the same neighborhood, from which they went to their youth basketball practices at their school. The following day, Asha's basketball team, on which she was a star point guard, lost its first game of the season. Asha had fouled out. Her parents recalled that she was somewhat upset about this, crying along with her teammates afterwards, but seemed to have gotten over it and watched her brother's game afterwards.

Disappearance

On February 13, a Sunday, the children went to church from a relative's house and then returned home. Around 8 p.m. that night, both children went to bed in the room they shared. Almost an hour later, the power went out in the neighborhood after a nearby car accident. The power came back on at 12:30 a.m., at which time Harold checked on his children and saw both Asha and O'Bryant asleep in their beds. He checked again shortly before he went to bed at 2:30 a.m. on February 14, and again saw them both.