Zahra Clare Baker is the little girl who never was to neighbors on 21st Avenue, NW.
“I’ve never seen her,” said Eddie Mitchell, who lives across from the Baker house.
“Nobody ever saw her,” said Elisabeth Goderstad, whose house is nearby on 22nd Street.
In fact, Mitchell says he saw Zahra’s stepmother, Elisa Baker, once.
“I walk two or three times a day,” Mitchell said Tuesday evening. Usually, he walks briskly a mile or so along 21st Street.
Occasionally, he’ll try N.C. 127 North, just steps from his house and the Bakers’.
It was one of those occasions when he saw Zahra’s father, Adam Baker, drive up with his wife. There was no child with them when they got out of the car.
“I’m always out,” Mitchell said. “I never noticed them (the Bakers) until about three weeks or a month ago.”
Mitchell has lived at the same location for two years.
“He was always out at the mailbox, and I would say hello, but I couldn’t get a reaction. He wasn’t a very sociable guy.”
He said some of the neighbors told him they saw Elisa Baker from time to time.
Mitchell said he was surprised Sunday morning when a Hickory police officer asked him if he had seen Zahra.
Then, it was the officer’s turn to be surprised when Mitchell said never.
The Baker house is a simple, one-story structure, with a tarp over part of the roof, stacks of firewood in the backyard, a log splitter and a truck from Real Tree Services of Morganton.
An adult dog and a puppy stay in the back yard. A neighbor, according to a passerby, waters the dogs.
However, Mitchell said he never heard any commotion or machinery being operated on the property.
“This is a quiet neighborhood,” he said. Several older people live on the street.
“He (Adam Baker) was always out front, but I didn’t notice anything going on behind the house — but then the house screens the yard.”
Mitchell said he heard the siren Saturday morning when the fire was reported in the Bakers’ back yard.
“But I hear them all the time, so I didn’t think much about it.”
He said police asked to look around his property Saturday. Mitchell consented.
Then, Sunday morning, “They took the stepmother away in handcuffs.”
Police looked around Mitchell’s place again.
He said he’s looked for Zahra when he walks, and checked out some nearby woods.
Nothing.
“It’s crazy,” Mitchell said.
On 22nd Street, there are lots of children who get out and play, according to Goderstad. But none of the kids ever saw Zahra.
“We thought the house was vacant,” she said.
Many of the children are in Zahra’s age group. There’s a spot nearby the Baker house where the children like to play.
“None of the children saw her,” Goderstad said, adding that police talked to the children, but to no avail.
“Nobody’s letting their kids out now,” she said. “You can’t leave your children out. You don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Goderstad said the child of one of her relatives went to school with Zahra in Caldwell County last year.
The girl was described as a loner. And one day, Zahra was no longer in school.
“I hope they have the right person in jail,” Goderstad said, referring to Elisa Baker.
“Then another child won’t get hurt.”
The news that the investigation into Zahra’s disappearance is now a homicide case is disturbing, Goderstad said.
“It’s so sad,” she repeated.
Still, she hopes for the best for the little girl who beat cancer, the girl whose disappearance was still a mystery Tuesday evening, the girl that nobody in the neighborhood ever knew.
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