A week later, no answers: Family’s search for Branson Oduor grows more desperate

Update: A body pulled from the Inner Harbor Tuesday morning was identified as Branson Oduor. An investigation is ongoing.

There was nothing unusual about the night of April 3, when Branson Oduor went out for dinner and drinks with a friend after work, his mom said.

“I was just hoping he would go, have fun, come back home and life goes on as usual,” Millicent Obongo said.

But Oduor never made it home.

No one has heard from or seen the 27-year-old Baltimore man since the early morning of April 4 when he left The Horse You Came In On Saloon in Fells Point, a popular area full of bars and restaurants near the waterfront.

Now Obongo and Oduor’s father, George, have been driving an hour from Germantown to Baltimore every day looking for their son, who has been missing for a week. Since he went missing, his friends and girlfriend, Emily Costa, have been spreading the word on social media.

Looking for Oduor are his former colleagues at Brightview Senior Living facility, his hometown friends and others in Baltimore who simply want to help.

The Baltimore Police Department said he was seen on camera footage April 4 on South Central Avenue and Fleet Street.

“He had plans for the future,” Obongo said, adding that her son had just started a job at Greenberg Gibbons, a real estate developer, and showed no signs of distress.

She was handing out flyers with a group of friends and loved ones around the Inner Harbor area Friday morning. The group also was on the hunt for more footage that could show where Oduor had gone.

The group also retraced his running path along the Inner Harbor promenade that he recently recorded on Strava, an app used to track runs and hikes.

Police said they found his electric bike, which had an Apple AirTag, in the 600 block of South President Street. The police department’s divers went out on the Inner Harbor to look for him Thursday and Friday, but they did not go out on the water Saturday, said James Moses, a spokesperson for the police department.

Claude Torres, the missing persons liaison for the Baltimore Police Department, said Friday that detectives were “still hoping and confident” that there would be a positive outcome after they found the footage of him walking away from the harbor area around 4 a.m.

There were no updates Saturday morning, according to Obongo and the police.

Some loved ones suspected that Oduor, a native of Kenya, might have been detained by immigration agents. But the Department of Homeland Security said in an email that its officers did not arrest Oduor.

Friends and family also continue their search for Oduor, whom many described as positive and outgoing.

Oduor’s landlord and next-door neighbor, Beyza Akcam, said everyone seemed to like Oduor’s friendly nature and he didn’t have an enemy.

Even though Oduor’s apartment near Camden Yards was about 2 miles from the bar where he was last heard from, Akcam said, he was a runner who knew the area well because of his daily runs.

“It’s unlike him to not reach out if he’s able to,” she said. “So something happened.”

Costa, 25, said her boyfriend of a year and a half “lives life to the fullest.”

“He is very outgoing and sociable,” she said. “He helps me get out of my shell and helps me not take life too seriously.”

The two planned to celebrate their first 18 months together on April 5 at Fogo de Chão. The last she heard from him was April 3. Now she’s helping canvass the city to find him.