East end Montreal woman disappears without a trace

MONTREAL – The search continued Friday for Hui Chen, an east end resident who mysteriously disappeared last week.

Her husband went to sleep at 11 p.m. Feb. 19 and woke up to see that she was gone, with nothing but her winter coat.

Montreal police said the case is very unusual.

“She just left all her belongings at home. She doesn’t have keys, ID, credit cards, passport,” said Manuel Couture of the SPVM.

“Everything is inside the house, so that’s more suspicious.”

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Police set up a mobile command unit at Parc Victor near her home in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.

They generally do thorough searches within a 500-metre radius of the home of a missing person, but even with the cavalry unit on site, not a trace was found.

“She has regular habits,” said Mei Guo, a close friend of Hui Chen.

“Going to work, meeting friends. She always calls when she goes around to make sure that people know where she is.”

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Just hours before Chen went missing, she had planned to meet with Mei Guo.

“We are very close friends. She’s like family, like a sister,” Guo added.

She and the Chinese community have collected money for a $10,000 reward for any information that leads to her friend’s return.

“I want to pray for her,” she said, “I would like to send her a message to say I wish her to come back.”

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Montreal police urge anyone with information to contact Inf0-Crime at (514) 393-1133.