NELSONVILLE, Ohio (WCMH) — The family of a man who left behind his wallet and phone, said he was going to buy a video game from an individual and then didn’t come back, spoke to NBC4 nearly a month after his disappearance.
Linda Bridgeman last saw her 30-year-old grandson, Bryan Kyle Bridgeman — who goes by Kyle — on June 4. Since then, the family has searched repeatedly the area around Nelsonville.
“He was at home, and I had talked to him earlier that day,” Linda said. “Then in the evening around 6 or 7, he left with a person. He had some money on him, and he had told me he was going to buy a game, and they left together.
“Kyle is very dependent on me. I help him take care of his bills, take him to the grocery story. We go shopping. He is a homebody, and for him to be gone this long, something’s wrong. He takes medicine daily. He’s on psych meds, and he is an alcoholic, and if he went a day without drinking, he would go into severe withdrawal symptoms.”
The family is offering a reward of $5,000 for information leading to the discovery of Kyle, and they’ve been out searching for him many times.
“We’ve searched a lot of different areas, mainly because of tips,” said Joseph Edwards, who is married to Kyle’s cousin Shana. “We’ve searched a lot of wooded areas, a lot of ponds. Isolated areas. Outlying areas of Nelsonville because of tips we’ve received from people who have given us more or less bad news about him.”
The Monday after Kyle didn’t come home, his grandmother Linda filed a missing persons report. “They’ve been in contact with all of us ever since.”
Family offers $5,000 reward
Someone in the area knows where Kyle is, Edwards is convinced: “We know that people know stuff. Because a lot of people were around during that time. There’s a $5,000 reward for people that know something that lead to the finding him. If they’d just speak up and say, ‘Hey, this is where Kyle’s at.'”
A person with information might be afraid to call the sheriff, Linda Bridgeman said. “Maybe they’re afraid, because if something did happen to Kyle it might happen to them, but I just plead with anybody to open their hearts up and just call. Call the police anonymously. I don’t care who you are. We just want to find him and bring him home.”
“There are a lot of people in the public interested in what happened to him, and they have areas they also want to search,” said Athens County Sheriff Rodney Smith. “Our detectives are following every credible lead. We encourage them to stay in contact with us.”
Sheriff follows all leads
Smith said that on June 14 the sheriff’s department searched under a trailer after a tip, and divers searched in two ponds and found nothing. “We have no information right now, but we are following every lead.”
The detectives have the possibility of bringing in dogs but need a specific area to search, said Smith. “If we had a specific area to look in [with dogs], we would do it if the situation warranted it,” he said.
The Sheriff’s Office is asking for anyone with information on Bridgeman’s whereabouts to contact them at 740-593-6633. “We will continue to follow up on every lead to locate Bryan Bridgeman,” Smith said.
Bryan “Kyle” Bridgeman is a white male, aged 30. He has brown hair and blue eyes, and stands at 5’6″ and 180 lbs. There have been no confirmed sightings of Bridgeman since he went missing on June 4, 2021 from his home in Nelsonville, Ohio. Bridgeman wears glasses and has a tattoo of a cross under his left eye. Bridgeman was last seen wearing blue shorts, a black shirt, and black shoes.
