What to Know
- The New Jersey woman who has been missing for two weeks twice called the police on her boyfriend for abuse, law enforcement sources said
- Stephanie Parze called the police in June and in September to report her boyfriend John Ozbilgen had abused her, sources said
- Parze said she was going to end the relationship and feared future attacks; she vanished Oct. 30 following a night out in New Brunswick
The New Jersey woman who for two weeks police and family have been searching for twice called the police on her boyfriend for abuse, law enforcement sources told NBC New York.
During their months-long relationship, Stephanie Parze accused John Ozbilgen of abuse in two separate instances, sources said. Ozbilgen is a person of interest in the 25-year-old’s disappearance in late October.
The first incident Freehold Township police were called for was in June, when Ozbilgen was accused of “grabbing her face, pulling her hair and dragging her by her hair causing minor injury and pain,” according to a police report.
Parze asked for that charge to be dismissed sometime afterward.
But three months later police were once again called, law enforcement sources said, this time for “striking the victim once and hitting her hand, causing injury to her thumb and thumbnail, then striking the victim a second time, making contact with the side of her head using his backhand,” the police report read.
Police reports claim Ozbilgen appeared to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol during one of the times they responded, and both times Parze said she was going to end the relationship. The police report also noted Parze was afraid of future assaults.
The second incident was five weeks before her disappearance. Ozbilgen’s brother declined to comment to NBC New York after answering the door at the family’s home a neighbor said they moved into last spring.
Parze vanished without a trace after joining her family for a night out in New Brunswick on Oct. 30, parents Sharlene and Ed previously told News 4. The 25-year-old kissed her mother goodbye after dropping them off at their place that night and headed for her home about 10 miles away, where she lives alone with her dog. She hasn’t been heard from since that night.
The search for the missing woman has taken investigators from the Monmouth County prosecutor’s office to Long Pond Park in Staten Island, only a few miles from where Ozbilgen, a person of interest in the disappearance, used to live.
Nearly two hundred detectives and NYPD officers searched the grounds on Wednesday, and according to law enforcement sources are likely to search again in the near future.
Ozbilgen did appear in court on Thursday, but it was on a child pornography charge unrelated to Parze’s disappearance.
For the past two weeks, family members have been putting up signs, hoping for any information that may lead officials to their missing loved ones.
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“I don’t know what to think, crazy people in this world,” said father Ed Parze.
The last contact her mother had from Stephanie was a Snapchat she sent not far from her home. Her parents say it is completely unlike her to disappear without reaching out to them.
“Definitely not like her. If she can get to me, she would,” father Ed Parze said. "Not knowing is the worst, not knowing is the worst. All we can hope for is that she’s alive and OK the things that go through my head is horrible. Horrible."
Attorney information for Ozbilgen was not immediately known.