Search for Missing LA Woman Continues

Malibu (myFOXla.com) - Authorities are still looking for a 24-year-old woman who disappeared after being released from the sheriff's Malibu-Lost Hills station last week.

Now, her family has set up a Web site -- findmitrice.info -- with information and have consulted with Civil Rights Attorney Leo James Terrell in connection with the case.

Terrell and family members of will hold a press conference on Thursday to discuss what’s described in a press release as “the poor handling and negligence of the Lost Hills Sheriff Station for releasing Ms. Richardson from jail at midnight without a car, identification, cell phone and or assistance in a remote area.”

It’s the above that led to Richardson’s missing status, according to the release.

Witnesses said Mitrice Richardson, 24, of Los Angeles was drunk and unable to pay her $89 bill at Geoffrey's restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu about 10 p.m. Thursday, according to her parents.

Deputies from the Malibu-Lost Hills had booked Richardson on suspicion of not paying for the meal, and with possession of less than an ounce of marijuana allegedly found in her impounded white 1990 Honda Civic.

Richardson was released about 1:25 a.m. Friday because "she exhibited no signs of mental illness or intoxication. She was fine. She's an adult," according to authorities.

She was allegedly offered the chance to stay at the station through the night, but declined.

According to her mother, Latice Sutton, a manager she spoke to at Geoffrey's said Richardson appeared to be in "no condition to drive" while at the restaurant.

Sutton said she called the Malibu-Lost Hills station to ask about posting bail and picking up her daughter, but deputies told her they had released her because they did not have room to keep her in jail.

The sheriff's station is on a frontage road to the Ventura (101) Freeway, in a business park that is unfamiliar to the woman, her family said. It is not served by buses at night, and family members say the woman has not contacted the family or been seen by them since.

The woman's father, Michael Richardson, said he was worried about his daughter's mental state after seeing her booking photo.

"She looked like a demon had come inside her. That was not my daughter," he said. "It ran chills up my spine. I've never seen my daughter look like that."

"They allowed her to walk out of that facility and down that road in the pitch black night," he told The Times. "That's not right. Now, I just want to find my child."

The woman's mother said deputies told her nearby residents had called to say a woman was sleeping on porches, indicating to her that Richardson was stumbling around a nearby residential neighborhood early Friday. Her parents filed a missing person report with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Richardson is a graduate of Cal State Fullerton and recently moved to Los Angeles to live with her grandmother near the area where she planned on teaching. She last made contact with her family at her home in the Southeast area of Los Angeles on Wednesday, police said.

Richardson is African-American, 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs about 135 pounds. She has brown, curly hair and hazel eyes, and was last seen wearing a dark shirt and blue jeans, police said.

According to a flyer made by her family, Richardson has tattoos on her lower abdomen and behind her neck.

Police urged anyone with information on her whereabouts to call the LAPD's Missing Persons Unit at (213) 485-5381, or (877) LAPD-24-7 after business hours or on weekends.