A missing man who has Down syndrome may have been riding the Red Line on Metro after he disappeared, coworkers of the man's father told him.
On Friday evening, Rashawn William, 31, walked out of a Residence Inn in Silver Spring and boarded a Metrobus outside. He has been missing ever since.
His family says he has Down syndrome, is nonverbal and cannot survive on his own.
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"He’s an angel," his father, Jimmy Hall, said as he shared with News4 photos from some of the biggest moments in his son's life: a baby portrait, pictures from Christmas, graduation and the prom.
Now all Hall worries about is finding his son.
"When he got on the Metrobus, he was just following the crowd," Hall said.
Williams had been staying at the Residence Inn with caregivers and others from his group home in Rockville after a fire. He told caregivers he was going to the bathroom, but then was seen in surveillance video walking out of the hotel, which is located at 12000 Plum Orchard Drive in the White Oak area of Silver Spring.
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The caregiving company says they called Williams' family about an hour after he went missing, but Williams' father says he wasn't contacted for two hours.
"This is the part that is so hurtful," Hall said. "From my understanding, my son went missing at 6:25 p.m. The staff didn’t call me until 8:39. If they had called me right away, I would have found my son myself, because I’d have had enough time to get there, because I know the route. I would have came in which the route was going and I’d have caught that bus and got my son."
A staff member from the caretaking company said they contacted Hall at 7:36 p.m. that night: "Right after the police had been called to the hotel."
The staff member continued: "We’ve been cooperating with the investigation, we hired a private investigator to help with the search. We’ve announced a $10,000 reward on Sunday, put out thousands of flyers and we are praying for Rashawn’s safe return."
Hall says his son rode on Metro's R2 bus route, which goes through Montgomery and Prince George's counties before ending at the Fort Totten rail station in D.C.
Hall happens to be a Metrorail operator himself. He said multiple coworkers have told him that his son boarded a Red Line train at Fort Totten and rode it back and forth for several hours Friday night until the train went out of service.
"Come to find out yesterday through my job, coworkers called me and told me they saw him on the train, the Red Line," Hall said. "He was on the train, riding the train for over three hours, going back and forth."
Hall said Metro employees at the Glenmont station saw his son getting off that Red Line train Friday night.
Metro employees looked for video of Williams at and near his last reported location but weren't able to find any footage of him, a spokesperson told News4 on Wednesday. The spokesperson said the reported sighting of Williams was unconfirmed and was being investigated.
Hall is still trying to find his son.
"Because right now, I’m just concerned with getting my son," he said. "I don’t care about the whys and who messed up and all of this. I just want to find my son."
He is urging anyone who sees him to please take a picture and call police immediately.
Rashawn Williams is 5 feet, 5 inches tall and weighs 150 pounds, police said. He has short black hair and brown eyes, and was last seen wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt, blue jeans and black shoes.
