Maui police are asking for the public's help finding Makela Eubanks, a 22-year-old woman from Mississippi who hasn't been heard from since the evening of Aug. 18. Eubanks arrived on Maui alone on July 20 on a one-way ticket from Mississippi, and she has since been seen in Wailuku, Kahului and Hāna, according to police. She does not own a vehicle.
Eubanks was reported missing on Aug. 31 by a concerned family member, according to Maui Now. Her last documented contact with police came on Friday, Aug. 7, though the nature of that contact has not been detailed. Her cell phone went dark on Aug. 18, the same evening she last communicated with acquaintances by phone, leaving nearly two weeks between her last known contact and the day her family alerted authorities.
Police describe Eubanks as an African American/Caucasian woman standing about 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighing roughly 220 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. What she was last wearing is unknown. Investigators have not said what, if anything, they have determined about how she traveled between Central Maui and the East Maui community of Hāna, a stretch of roughly 52 miles along the Hāna Highway that typically takes 2.5 to 4 hours to drive because of its 620 curves and 59 narrow bridges, according to Go Hawaii. Without a car, how she covered that ground between sightings remains an open question.
A Pattern of Missing-Person Cases on Maui
Eubanks' case is the latest in a string of missing-person searches Maui police have publicized in recent months. In August, Hoodline reported that police sought help finding a 44-year-old woman known to frequent Wailuku, a case that had been reclassified from a personal-assistance call to a full missing-person investigation after initial efforts turned up no leads. Similar searches over the past year have involved missing residents in Kahului and Wailuku, some resolved within days and others taking longer.
The volume of such cases has drawn attention from county lawmakers. In December 2024, the Maui County Council introduced a draft resolution urging the creation of a statewide missing persons task force after noting that the Maui Police Department had 40 active missing person cases at the time, with missing men outnumbering missing women, according to Maui Now's earlier reporting cited in county records. Statewide, Hawaii ranks among the top five states for per-capita missing-person rates in the country, alongside Alaska, Oklahoma and Arizona, according to National Missing and Unidentified Persons System data reported by Newsweek in April.
How Adult Missing-Person Cases Are Handled
Missing-person cases like Eubanks' fall under the Maui Police Department's Criminal Investigation Division, within its Crimes Against Persons branch, which also oversees homicide, kidnapping and domestic violence investigations, per county government records. Hawaii created a statewide Silver Alert program in 2024 through Act 158, mandating public broadcast alerts for missing vulnerable adults, but that framework is generally reserved for adults with cognitive impairments rather than cases like Eubanks', where investigators instead lean on public tips and social media outreach.
Hawaii law also sets a legal timeline for the rare cases that go unresolved for years: under Hawaii Revised Statutes § 560:1-107, a person who remains missing and unheard from despite diligent search efforts can be legally presumed dead only after five continuous years, a threshold the state shortened from the traditional seven-year common law standard, according to legal reference site Justia. Investigators have not indicated any expectation that Eubanks' case will approach that timeline, and no criminal element has been publicly identified.
Anyone with information on Eubanks' whereabouts is asked to contact the Maui Police Department's non-emergency line at 808-244-6400 and reference report number 26-022458. Those with emergency information should call 911.
