Asha Jaquilla Degree was born on August 5, 1990. She went missing when she was a 9 year old child from Shelby, North Carolina, United States. In the early morning hours of February 14, 2000, for reasons unknown, she packed her bookbag, 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 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 bookbag, still packed, was unearthed from a construction site along Highway 18 north of Shelby. At the point where she ran into the woods, a billboard now stands appealing for help finding her. Her family now 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, along with a blogger who has tried to solve the case, have speculated that she might have been abducted instead. The case has drawn national media attention. In 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation joined state and county authorities in a reopened investigation, offering a reward for information that could help solve the case. On Sunday, February 13, the children went to church from a relative's house and then returned home. Harold Degree went out to work his second shift job at the nearby PPG Industries plant in the afternoon.
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. It was restored shortly after Harold returned from work, around 12:30 a.m. At that time he checked on his children and saw both of them 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.
Shortly afterwards, O'Bryant recalls hearing Asha's bed squeak. He did not further rouse himself as he assumed she was merely changing positions in her sleep. Apparently around this time, Asha got out of bed, taking a bookbag she had previously packed with several sets of clothes and personal items, and left the house. Between 3:45 and 4:15 a.m., two drivers saw her walking south along Highway 18, wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt and white pants, just north of its junction with Highway 180. They reported this to police after seeing a TV report about her disappearance.
One witness reported seeing her at about 4 a.m., and said that he turned his car around because he thought it was "strange such a small child would be out by herself at that hour". He circled three times and saw Degree run into the woods by the roadside and disappear. It was a rainy night, and the witness said there was a "storm raging" when he saw her.
Iquilla awoke at 5:45 a.m. to get the children ready for school. On the morning of February 14, an important day since it was not only Valentine's Day but the Degrees' wedding anniversary, this involved drawing a bath for them as they had not been able to take one the night before due to the power outage. When she opened the children's room to wake them up before their 6:30 alarm and call them to the bath, O'Bryant was in his bed but Asha was not, and Iquilla was unable to find her in the house, nor in the family cars.
She told Harold she could not find their daughter. He suggested Asha might have gone over to his mother's house across the street, but when Iquilla called there her sister-in-law said Asha was not there. "That's when I went into panic mode. I heard a car next door ... I put shoes on and ran outside." Iquilla called her mother, who told her to call the police. By 6:40 a.m., the first police officers had arrived on the scene. Police dogs called to the scene could not pick up Asha's scent. Iquilla went through the neighborhood calling Asha's name, which she said had awakened everyone by 7 a.m.
Friends, family and neighbors canceled their plans for the day to assist police in searching the vicinity while the pastor of their church, along with other area clergymen, came to the Degrees' home to support them. By day's end all that had been found was a mitten, which Iquilla Degree said did not belong to her daughter as she had found that no winter clothing had been taken from the house. Local news coverage resulted in the three drivers who had seen Asha walking along the road early that morning, including the one whose attempt to approach her apparently prompted Asha to flee into the woods, reporting the sightings to police. On February 17, two days after the search began, candy wrappers were found in a shed at a nearby business along the highway, near where Asha had been seen running into the woods. Along with them were a pencil, marker and Mickey Mouse-shaped hair bow that were identified as belonging to her. It would be the only trace of her found during the initial search. A week later, after 9,000 man hours had been invested in a search of the 2–3-mile-radius of where she had last been seen, flyers posted all over the area and 300 leads ranging from possible sightings to tips about abandoned houses and wells where Asha might have ended up, the search was called off. "We have never really had that first good, substantial lead," said county sheriff Dan Crawford at a news conference. He urged the media to keep the story alive.
