A suspicious vehicle was reported to have been at Lower Lovelace Road between 2 and 2:45 p.m. Friday, around the same time Carol Evans disappeared from her home, according to a Facebook post from the Troup County Sheriff’s Office. Investigators from the TCSO received information from a neighbor Wednesday that the vehicle is a two-door rust brown Cutlass with plain rims and a loud muffler.

The driver was described as an African American male. The neighbor told the investigators that the car turned left onto Lower Lovelace Road and drove at a high rate of speed before running the stop sign and turning onto Shoemaker Road. The neighbor said they had never seen the vehicle before.

Sgt. Stewart Smith with the TCSO said this information does not change the investigation, but that the office wanted to share it. Smith said the new information does not mean that Evans was taken by the car’s driver.

“It doesn’t change any scope of it or anything like that. It’s still listed as a missing person case, so we’re just sharing this information. Just the fact that this vehicle was seen on the road at about or around the time she went missing,” Smith said. “Nobody is saying that the car or the driver took her or anything like that. This is just some information we felt we needed to share.”

Smith said it’s always been possible Evans was picked up by a car.

“Right now, we’ve not been able to find her in the general search area that we believe she would have walked to, and like we said initially either on Saturday or Sunday that it was never out of the case or never out of the realm of possibilities that somebody picked her up not criminally, just that she flagged somebody down or somebody stopped for assistance and she told them that she needed a ride,” he said. “That’s always been in the picture, and we’ve shared that early on in this investigation.”

Smith said the search for the 75-year-old woman has been about half a mile to a mile from her house.

“Our radius was from the house about a half a mile to a mile radius from the house. Then on Sunday we went back to the house and made an even tighter 200-yard radius and just searched really heavily again,” he said.

Smith said searching for Evans has been frustrating for investigators.

“It’s very frustrating because we want closure just like the family does. We want to know where she’s at,” he said. “Through this time, we’ve gotten to know the family and spoken to them, and so we want closure for us and for them.”

Smith said the TCSO is now mainly focusing on getting Evans’ story out to the community.

“That’s certainly the major thing we are focusing on now is just continuing to get her face out there, get the story out there and if by any chance anyone did see something and they’ve been hesitant to call,” Smith said. “A neighbor just told us that information today, not thinking anything of it until today, and so we certainly rely on that.”

The TCSO has been searching for the missing 75-year-old woman since Friday afternoon. Evans was last seen in her house in West Point Friday when her husband went to cut grass at 2 p.m. She suffers from an “altered mental state,” according to Smith.

Nearby hospitals have been notified and the TCSO has frequently updated the search on its Facebook page.

Anyone with information is asked to contact 911, the TCSO at (706) 883-1616 or Troup County Crime Stoppers as (706) 812-1000.