Foye Wade Davis had a reputation for being a walker.
“He has walked anywhere from five to eight miles for probably ten years or more,” his daughter, Sharon Clemmer, told Dateline. “He’s an avid walker.”
According to his daughter, 78-year-old Wade had a few routes he liked to take near the home he shared with his wife in Jacinto, Mississippi. “Typically, his walk was a route that made a circle around their house,” Sharon said. “He was raised there. He’s been there all his life, so it was an area he was very, very familiar with.”
On Wednesday, June 22, 2022, Wade set out for a walk around 9 a.m. with his dog Buddy — a brindle Boxer.
He never returned.
Sharon told Dateline that, in 2022, her father had been experiencing early symptoms of dementia. They were mild enough, however, that they hadn’t stopped him from living his life the way he always had. Wade is the father of 4, the grandfather of 12, and the great-grandfather of 12. According to Sharon, he remembered all of them well. “He knew us all,” she said. “He was still allowed to drive, per the doctor.”
Wade was also a preacher at a small church. “He had his sermon started — prepared for Sunday,” Sharon said. “Wednesday, he would have been doing a Bible class that night. And he had that prepared, also.”
That Wednesday morning, June 22, 2022, Wade got into a small disagreement with his wife, Sue.
“It was something about doing the dishes and mowing the yard,” Alcorn County Sheriff Ben Caldwell told Dateline. “So he just took his dog for a walk just to kind of cool off, or just — he did that pretty much every day, anyway.”
According to Sheriff Caldwell, Wade and Buddy left the house around 9 a.m.
At around 9:20 a.m., Wade could be seen on a home security camera about half a mile from his house. “They did have video cameras and he was on camera walking north past that residence,” Caldwell said.
A witness reported seeing Wade about 10 minutes later walking north on County Road 343. Sheriff Caldwell says this is believed to be the last sighting of Wade Davis.
According to his family, Wade’s walks would sometimes take place off of County Road 343 — a gravel road which veers onto several former logging or hunting trails surrounded by wooded areas.
“He would typically walk those logging trails — old logging trails — and would be gone several hours,” Sheriff Caldwell told Dateline. “Around lunchtime — around 12, 12:30, when he didn’t come back — [Wade’s wife] got a little concerned.”
Caldwell says Sue Davis reported her husband missing to the sheriff’s office around 2:45 p.m. that same day and the search began immediately. “It was a very intense search,” he said, explaining that multiple agencies — including several sheriff’s offices, fire departments, and search and rescue teams — participated in the initial efforts. A Silver Alert was also sent out by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which assisted with the investigation.
Wade’s two daughters, Sharon Clemmer and Sheila Tice, both of whom live about an hour from their parents, drove to Jacinto immediately after hearing their father was missing.
“By the time we got there, it was 4 or 5,” Sheila told Dateline. “There was Homeland Security trailers there, police cars, emergency rescue vehicles.” The sisters described the scene as overwhelming. “The scene was devastating,” Sharon said. “We were thankful they were there, but it was very shocking.”
According to Sheriff Caldwell, officials quickly found Wade’s footprints in the area he was last seen walking. “It was very clear it was a New Balance shoe. You can see the NB on the sole of the shoe and there was also dog tracks alongside his footprints,” he told Dateline. “We found those all over that area.”
The footprints told a story. “It wasn’t like he would just walk down a trail, turn around, come back onto the main road,” Sheriff Caldwell said. “It appeared he would walk through the woods, come out to another trail and come back out to the main road. And actually from the information we gathered from, you know, his family and other individuals in that community, that was — that was a regular thing for him to do.”
Caldwell says officers were unable to track Wade’s footprints in the more heavily-wooded areas that surrounded the trails. The department used thermal drones at night in its attempt to locate him in those areas. Officers searched “day and night” for about five days. “And then at that point it became — we started searching during daylight hours trying to give us the best option to locate him,” Caldwell explained. On-foot daytime searches continued for about a week after that. “And then it got to a point,” he said, “there was nowhere else to search.”
Two weeks after Wade disappeared, volunteers found Buddy about half a mile from home. “That dog — when he came back, it did not have a collar on it,” Sheriff Caldwell said. On the security video of the last known sighting of Wade, Buddy can be seen with both a collar and leash on.
The Alcorn County Sheriff’s Office took Buddy to a veterinarian, who gave him some medication to empty out his stomach contents in the hope that it would give the department a clue as to where he’d been for the prior two weeks. “We found some pine needles and some green leaves,” Sheriff Caldwell said. “That kind of put us in an area of those woods, where that dog might have been. But, you know, it didn’t unfortunately didn’t lead us [to Wade].”
Sheriff Caldwell says the department does not believe Wade Davis met with foul play. “The evidence points to — is that he either had a medical episode, he got turned around — got lost in those wooded areas,” he said. “Obviously, we — we don’t take anything off the table.”
As the third anniversary of Wade’s disappearance approaches, his family just wants answers. “That’s all we can think about. That’s all we want to do — is search for Dad,” Sheila Tice told Dateline. “We wake up thinking about where he might be. We can’t sleep.”
Sharon Clemmer says that through this process their faith in God has grown stronger. “Dad lived and breathed the Bible.” she said. “We know that, no matter what, God was with him.”
Wade is 5’11” and weighed approximately 200 lbs. at the time of his disappearance. He has white hair and hazel eyes. He was last seen wearing dark blue jeans, a checked short-sleeved shirt, and brown New Balance tennis shoes. He would be 80 years old today.
Anyone with information about the disappearance of Foye Wade Davis is asked to contact the Alcorn County Sheriff’s Office at 662-286-5521.
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