‘She Just Vanished’: Indiana Woman Goes Missing After Night Out With Friends

In January 2021, Kirsten Brueggeman, 26, was last seen on surveillance video walking in an area not far from a popular pub.

Kirsten Brueggeman, a 5-foot-2-inch, 115-pound white female with brown hair and eyes, was last seen wearing a black, waist-length coat, blue jeans and a gray stocking cap.

In January 2021, Kirsten Brueggeman was last seen on surveillance video walking in an area not far from a popular pub.

Photo by: Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department

By: Aaron Rasmussen

Around 2 a.m. on Jan. 2, 2021, a surveillance camera captured video of Kirsten Brueggeman walking through a YMCA parking lot in Indianapolis, Indiana. Nobody has seen her since.

“She just vanished,” said her mother, Lisa Brueggeman. “That's the best way to describe what happened.”

Investigators assigned to the case noted Bruggeman, 26, would have had to climb a fence in the area of the lot where she was headed or circled back around, but they were unable to track her next movements since the camera was faulty.

“The video cuts in and out,” Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Detective Nicole Bockting explained. “If it hadn't done that, we wouldn't be sitting here wondering where she is.”

According to the The Indianapolis Star, Brueggeman lived with her parents, and the night she disappeared she was out at Manley’s Irish Mutt, a local restaurant and pub not far from the YMCA.

Brueggeman was drinking with her friends when she reportedly got into an argument with them and they left her behind and headed to a local bowling alley.

“It eats at my conscience because we were there right before whatever happened,” one woman in the group, Robyn Lybrook Hirt, told The Star. “If only we wouldn't have left her there.”

Brueggeman’s mother recalled getting a sense something was wrong that night.

“Call it mother’s intuition, but I felt like something bad had really happened,” Lisa Brueggeman told WXIN. “I woke up at about 12:30, about the same time her phone went off, and that’s when I first tried to call her and her phone was off.”

Months after Brueggeman went missing, her family hired a private investigator and offered a reward in the hope they could get some answers.

In March, Rex Brueggeman, told The Star that Kirsten’s loved ones have learned “almost nothing more” about his missing daughter’s whereabouts.

Anyone with information about the disappearance of Kirsten Brueggeman is asked to contact the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department's missing persons unit at (317) 327-6160 or online at missingpersons@indy.gov.

For more on this case, stream Disappeared: "Vanished in the Night" on Max.

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