Asha's basketball team loses their first match of the season. Asha plays point guard. According to the FBI, Asha fouled out, and her team lost by one point. Asha's mom and teammates have to calm Asha down because she is very competitive and becomes very upset at the loss. However, minutes later, Asha's mom and coach see Asha happy, joking, smiling, and back to her normal self as she watches her brother play during his basketball game.

Burns Middle School

Asha and her family go to the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Waco. Asha's mom remembers Asha being over her upset feelings from yesterday's game and was happy all day Sunday. Asha's grandmother also remembers her being happy from receiving Valentine's candy today. After church, they go to Asha's aunt's house for lunch and go home.

Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church

Asha was tired from the sleepover she had attended the night before. She takes a nap around 6:30 in the room she shares with her brother

Asha's Home

There is a thunder and lightning storm that evening. Asha wakes up at 8:30 pm and watches television with her family in the den. She returns to bed at 9 pm.

Asha's Home

The night before Asha goes missing the power goes out because a car crashed into an electric wire.

Asha's Home

The power is restored in the neighborhood following the car accident. Asha's father checks on both children, who sleep in the same room.

Asha's Home

Asha's father checks on the children and then goes to bed.

Asha's Home

Sometime between 2:30 am and 3:30 am, Asha leaves her house. Police believe she left on her own accord. Asha's basketball had its first loss that weekend, and her family thinks Asha could have left because she was upset about the loss. Asha leaves with her black book bag, a pair of blue jeans with a red stripe, black sneakers, a long-sleeved white shirt with purple lettering, a red vest with black trim, and a black purse with Tweety Bird on it, and a long-sleeved black and white shirt.

Asha's Home

Motorist, Jeff Ruppe, reports seeing Asha with a backpack walking south on N.C. 18 at 3:45 am. FBI states that this witness is fairly credible. He turned his 10-wheeler around because he thought the sight of this young girl walking was so strange considering the time of day. However, Asha never looked up at him, and Ruppe recalls she was walking at a good pace.

Asha Sighting

Several drivers notice Asha as she walks south along Highway 18 in the direction of Shelby, which is about one mile from her home. The weather is very bad; it’s cold and raining heavily, but Asha is not wearing a coat, hat, scarf, or gloves. One concerned driver, Jeff Ruppe, drives past Asha and is concerned, so he turns his 10-wheeler truck around to check up on her. However, Asha doesn't look up at him once and gives off the impression that she knows where she is going, so he leaves her be. The other driver only reported seeing her and took no action at the time of the event. The FBI states that these witnesses are fairly credible.

Asha Sighting

Asha was potentially seen getting into a vehicle. The vehicle is thought to be a Lincoln Mark IV or a Ford Thunderbird with rusted wheels.

Asha Sighting

Iquilla's alarm goes off at 5:45 am. Iquilla wakes up 45 minutes earlier than her kids, who wake up at 6:30 am to get ready for school.

Asha's Home

Asha's parents, Harold and Iquilla, go to wake Asha and her brother O'Bryant up for school. O'Bryant perks up, but Asha isn't in her bed. There are no signs of forced entry or indication of where she had gone. Iquilla checks downstairs, every closet in the house, the cars, and tells her husband that Asha is not inside the house. Harold says that Asha could be at her mother-in-law's house, so Iquilla calls her mother-in-law, who tells Iquilla that Asha is not there. Iquilla then begins to panic. Iquilla hears a car next door and runs outside with no shoes on to investigate but finds nothing. She has Harold call the police.

Asha's Home

Harold calls 911 at 6:39 am. The call lasted 2 minutes and 40 seconds. Harold tells the 911 operator that he went to wake her up for school and noticed she wasn't there. Her backpack and pocketbook were missing from the home. He also tells the operator that her brother did not hear Asha leave the room.

Asha's Home

By 6:40 am, the first police officer arrives, and three minutes later, the sheriff and other officers arrive at the house. Officers ask for pictures of Asha and search with K-9 units but are unable to find a scent. Iquilla runs up and down the neighborhood road yelling Asha's name. Asha's mom mentions to law enforcement that Asha was upset about the first basketball loss that weekend.

Asha's Home

After hearing about Asha's disappearance on television, the motorists who had seen Asha walking along Highway 18 contact police.

Asha's pencil, candy wrappers, and Mickey Mouse bowtie are found in the doorway of a toolshed at Turner's Upholstery, along the N.C. 18 highway where Asha was last seen walking by motorists the morning she went missing. These items are found more than one mile away from Asha's home. The owner of Turner's upholstery, Debbie Turner, find's these items on this day but didn't relate them to the case. Police find this discovery on February 17, 2001.

Turner Upholstery

By February 16, 2000, law enforcement and over 100 volunteers have searched for Asha for three days. So far, the full-scale search has involved horseback riders, people on foot, search dogs, emergency response teams, and an N.C. Highway Patrol Helicopter with infrared detection equipment. The large-scale search does lead to tips that detail the last time Asha was seen.

Asha Sighting

After seven days of searching and a collective 9,000 hours of searching by members, police indefinitely suspend the search for Asha in the areas surrounding her home. Police state that they have searched the area so extensively that they believe she isn't there.

Asha Sighting

Asha’s black and beige backpack, which has her name and telephone number written on it, is found by Terri Fleming, who is a construction worker digging an access road for a new home in Burke County. The backpack was buried and found less than 50 yards off of N.C 18, the highway she was last seen on, approximately 26 miles from her family's home. The bag is double-wrapped in black plastic trash bags and has a "New Kids on the Block" T-shirt and a "McElligot's Pool" Dr. Seuss book. These two items do not belong to Asha. The public is not told the content of Asha's backpack until 17 years later, on October 8, 2018. Asha's bag is sent to a federal laboratory in Quantico, VA, for testing, but the results are never released. Media sources say that the bookbag was found near the home of a convicted sex offender, but police never found evidence linking him to Asha's disappearance. Police search the surrounding area but do not find additional evidence.

Asha's Backpack

Acting on a tip from a man in prison, investigators conduct an excavation search at the corner of Shelby and Rube Spangler Road near Lawndale, South Carolina. They found bones, which turned out to belong to an animal. They also find a pair of men’s khaki trousers. The dig site is approximately 6 miles from Asha's home.

Site Excavation

In 2010, a prisoner claims involvement in Asha's case, but this announcement leads to no new breaks in the case.

Cleveland Sheriff's office, FBI, and NC State Bureau of Investigations join to conduct a top-to-bottom reexamination of Asha's case, which generates a total of 350 leads, 45 of which were developed within that year.

A black trash bag similar to the ones that Asha's belongings are wrapped in is found by a construction worker. The bag is sent to a police lab for testing. While the backpack was not Asha's, it does give authorities new avenues to explore. The backpack was found further than Asha. It is believed to have walked, suggesting she may have been abducted and killed.

New investigators looking into Asha’s case announce a new lead, a sighting of Asha getting into a 1970s Lincoln Mark IV or a Ford Thunderbird. There were two other people in the car.

The CARD team, which didn't exist in 2000, is deployed to Asha's case. The CARD team consists of bureau personnel from across the country who are experts at working child abduction cases, which act as a resource for state and local law enforcement. The CARD team receives case files, tears apart the case, eliminates suspects, and narrows the focus of the investigation.

Cleveland County sheriff's office announces two new possible clues: a "McElligot's Pool" Dr. Seuss book and “A New Kids on the Block” concert T-shirt. These items are not Asha's, but they were found in Asha's bookbag in 2001 by construction workers. However, this information is not released until 2018. FBI asks the public if they or anyone they know remember losing these two items or recognize them from around the time Asha went missing to come forward with information. 

Marcus Mellon, a prison inmate at the Alexander Correctional facility, writes a letter to The Star of Shelby. In his letter, he says that he found out that Asha was killed and taken to be buried and that he knows how she was killed and where to find her. Officers say this process may be slow due to a COVID-19 outbreak in the prison. Later interviews with Mellon and other inmates revealed no legitimate developments in Asha's case.

The FBI makes a comment to the media that they are still actively investigating the case and continue to have regular meetings, generate and follow new leads, and utilize new technology that didn't exist at the time. The FBI state that Asha did not have a cell phone.

The FBI has shared major updates in the search for Asha. Neighbors say FBI agents have executed several search warrants in the county, but the FBI would not share any details. On one particular property, news news saw several officers with dogs, all-terrain vehicles, and special equipment on Cherryville Road new Spake Circle. There were as many as 50-60 investigators searching the property.

Dedmon Family Home

According to the recently released search warrant, a family from Cleveland County has been linked to Asha's disappearance -- which is now believed to be a homicide investigation. The locations of the recent searches have been discovered to be that of the Dedmon family, where DNA samples have linked Asha with AnnaLee Dedmon Ramirez, and a man named Russell Underhill. Investigators now believe Degree is a “victim of homicide, with her body concealed,” authorities wrote in the search warrant application. Because of the Dedmon sisters’ ages at that time, investigators believe “adult assistance” from their father, Roy Dedmon, and their mother, Connie Dedmon, “would have been necessary in the execution and/or concealment of the crime.”

Dedmon Family Home