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(NewsNation) — After Paige Coffey disappeared in Ohio in 2019, police have told NewsNation exclusively that they now have a person of interest in the case.

Paige Coffey loved fashion

A fashion major in college, Coffey worked a retail job while working on her own designs and creating art with fashion.

In his first interview, Tyreek Crump told NewsNation his sister often made and fixed his clothes.

“She used to just make clothes back to back,” he said. “I used to mess up my clothes, she used to always fix it and stuff like that. So it was just nice having that around. And that’s a real gift, right there.”

Coffey’s mother, Trinettea Williamson, said the two were close.

“We were best friends,” she said, “So we talk all day, every day.”

Paige Coffey disappears

When Coffey stopped texting with her mother in May of 2019, Williamson became worried.

After Mother’s Day came and went, she began to suspect something sinister had happened.

“Paige always called me on Mother’s Day, even if she was upset with me,” Williamson said, “She’s still going to text me happy Mother’s Day. So that was so not like Paige.”

The Bratenhal Police Chief handling the case said Coffey visited a motel in Copley, Ohio, on May 5, 2019.

Paige Coffey rekindled an old relationship

She wasn’t alone on that stay, traveling with an old boyfriend, Patrick Mason Jr. The couple had recently reunited.

Williamson was concerned about the relationship.

“One day I saw her leg wrapped up in bandages and I asked her about it, I said, what happened to your leg? Because I could see blood,” she said, “And she was like, oh, something like went into my leg at the house. And I’m like, that makes no sense. It was just something after another after another.”

The last time police could find Coffey appearing on surveillance was during a May 6, 2019, visit to a Home Depot in Cleveland Ohio’s Steelyard Commons area.

She was with Mason again, the pair seen on camera buying brake fluid and a candy bar.

Coffey was never seen again.

“They stated that it was no cameras outside, so they don’t know if she went one way, he went another way,” Williamson said.

Crump said his sister’s disappearance was shocking.

“It hit me real hard the first day. I remember crying and stuff like that,” he said. “But then as days go on, I’m like, she’ll come around soon. And then it just kept going and kept going and here we are today.”

Police name person of interest in Paige Coffey disappearance

For the first time since Coffey’s disappearance, the Bratenhal Police chief told NewsNation exclusively that Mason is a person of interest in the missing case.

In a formal statement, the department said, “Law enforcement partners on the local, county, state and federal levels have conducted many interviews and executed countless search warrants” in the case.

NewsNation tracked Mason, 33, to a jail near Youngstown, Ohio, where he’s being held on a federal gun charge.

His attorney of record for that case has not returned requests for comment from Mason.

Person of interest has been implicated in other crimes

NewsNation also discovered that the Cleveland Police had investigated Mason for the murder of 15-year-old Naierra Lockhart.

She was found shot to death in October 2019.

The police case was presented to prosecutors, and the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office did not file felony criminal charges.

Lockhart’s murder, which happened just five months after Coffey disappeared, remains unsolved.

Paige Coffey’s family wants closure

Those new details have only added to the family’s pain.

“I’ve never lost anybody for real, so for this to be the first time and then to not know if she’s alive or here with us, that’s the tricky part,” Crump said. “I really don’t know how to feel.”

William said she wants closure.

“I didn’t want it at the beginning. I don’t think I was ready, but now I do want the closure, because you can’t move on. You can’t move forward without that,” she said.

This upcoming Mother’s Day will be Williamson’s sixth without her daughter.