Chase Allen Lackey was 25 years old when he stepped out of his northeast Harris County apartment on July 2, 2017, to walk his small white Maltese, Champ, and neither man nor dog has been seen since. Nearly a decade later, Lackey's family is still pushing for answers about what happened that day.
Investigators who searched Lackey's apartment complex in the days after he vanished found his pickup truck still parked outside, according to Click2Houston. Inside the apartment, his driver's license, debit card, Social Security card, passport, wallet, cell phone and keys were all untouched, and the Harris County Sheriff's Office found no signs of forced entry.
Lackey was last seen in the 6200 block of East Sam Houston Parkway near Wallisville Road, according to the Charley Project, which tracks his case among long-term missing person files. The apartment complex sits in a stretch of northeast Harris County lined with parks and commercial corridors, the kind of area where a man and his small dog would ordinarily be easy to spot on an evening walk.
Deputies Say Foul Play Is Suspected, Cite Troubling Associations
By May 2018, the Sheriff's Office Special Victims Unit told the outlet that foul play was suspected in Lackey's disappearance. Investigators said individuals Lackey had been associating with shortly before he vanished were involved in illegal activities, though deputies declined to name those associates in order to protect the ongoing investigation. No suspects have been publicly named or charged in the years since.
Before he disappeared, Lackey worked as an ironworker for a plant construction company and was known as an avid baseball player, according to Grizzy's Hood News. He played in a recreational softball game in Crosby on June 30, 2017, two days before he vanished, with his father in attendance to watch him play.
Search Teams Combed Nearby Parks, Found No Trace
Texas EquuSearch, a Houston-area search and recovery organization, deployed searchers to comb the area around Lackey's apartment complex and nearby parks shortly after he was reported missing, according to a public alert from the group. The searches turned up no trace of Lackey or Champ.
The Harris County Sheriff's Office lists Lackey's disappearance as an active missing persons investigation under case number 17-107635, and Crime Stoppers of Houston is offering a cash reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to an arrest or charges. His case is also cataloged federally in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System under case MP39085 and tracked through the Texas Missing Persons Clearinghouse, per the same report from Grizzy's Hood News.
Case Underscores Texas's Backlog of Missing Adults
Lackey's case is one of thousands still open across Harris County. According to the Texas Center for the Missing, 3,327 adult missing person entries were filed in Harris County in 2025 alone, accounting for more than 27% of all missing adult reports filed statewide that year.
Statewide, 12,080 adults were reported missing across Texas in 2025, out of 40,309 total missing person filings logged in the FBI's National Crime Information Center database, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Adults accounted for nearly 30% of all missing person reports filed in the state that year.
To help local agencies work through long-unsolved disappearances and unsolved homicides, the Office of the Texas Attorney General established a Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit in March 2021. The state maintains more than 20,000 unsolved homicide and missing person cases, per the same office.
Family Still Waiting for Answers, Eight Years Later
As of this week, according to KHOU, Lackey's family says they are still searching for answers eight years after he and Champ disappeared. Tips in the case can be submitted anonymously through Crime Stoppers of Houston, though no new leads have publicly surfaced since investigators first raised the possibility of foul play.
