Unsolved Ohio: Man who vanished from Easton area still missing five years later

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – After a night out at Easton Town Center to celebrate his wife Brittany’s birthday, Tyler Davis said he was going for a walk and never returned. Despite his disappearance gaining national attention, Brittany is still searching for answers five years later. 

“Tyler is very funny, he’s very sarcastic,” Brittany said. “He loved to spend time with his son and he was also a gamer so he was always playing different kinds of video games.”

On Feb. 23, 2019, Brittany and Tyler, 29, were getting ready to celebrate her 23rd birthday. They dropped their one-year-old son off with Tyler’s parents and headed to the Hilton hotel at Easton, checking in around 5 p.m. Brittany, of Wilmington, said it was her first time in the Columbus area.

The couple invited multiple friends to go out for Brittany’s birthday, but only one of Tyler’s close friends from college came. Later that evening, the trio went to a couple of bars in the area and had some drinks. They took a rideshare back to the hotel around 3 a.m., according to Brittany. She said Tyler and his friend both fell asleep in the car.

“When we had gotten in front of the Hilton, it was almost like he was confused like he didn’t think that we were where we were supposed to be, and he just took off walking, and I went to go follow him, and his buddy was like ‘No, it’s fine, I got it, you go ahead,’” Brittany said. 

Tyler and his friend began walking south of the Hilton. Brittany went back inside the hotel because her phone was dying. Around 3:30 a.m., Tyler called Brittany, saying he was taking a walk and would be right back. Shortly after, Tyler's friend returned to the hotel alone.

“I had kept calling the both of them and they didn’t answer, and then [his friend] came back but he was by himself, and I was like, ‘Do you know what happened? What’s going on?’ and he’s like, ‘He just needs a minute, Brittany, he’s just taking a walk, he’ll be right back,’” Brittany said.

Tyler attempted to put the hotel in his phone GPS at 3:51 a.m., police revealed in an October 2019 news conference. Shortly after 4 a.m., Brittany received another phone call – it was Tyler. 

“He had said something about walking through the woods, like, ‘I’m walking through the woods; I can see the hotel’ and so we get off the phone, and I immediately call him directly back,” Brittany said.

When she called him back the line stayed open for four seconds – Brittany assumed he had answered the call, but then the call dropped. When she tried to call him back, his phone went straight to voicemail and has ever since. 

Brittany said she began to get increasingly nervous as she could not get in contact with him. She began calling friends for advice and walking around looking for Tyler. A past roommate of the couple who lived in the area picked Brittany up and they continued searching.

“I didn’t know if something had happened, if we was in the hospital, or like maybe he got arrested,” Brittany said. “We checked all the bases, and then by that point, I was like, 'OK, so we need to call his parents, we need to call police,' and things got very real very fast.”

Around 10:30 a.m., she called Columbus police to report her husband missing. Five years later, what happened to Tyler that morning remains a mystery. A spokesperson with Columbus police said they do not have any update on the case to share at this time.

“Logically, I know Tyler would have never left his son or his parents at all,” Brittany said. “I don’t know if he got hurt somehow, and I don’t really know what to think, because I, honestly, still can’t believe I’m still in this situation, and it's been ongoing and there are no answers.”

In the months after Tyler’s disappearance, the case captured the attention of social media users. Brittany was at the center of widespread speculation – she said her address and phone number were released online, and even her job received phone calls from people who knew of the case.

“I’ve been involved with many missing persons cases from Ohio over the years, and I have to say that they were absolutely brutal to Brittany and it was very, very hard to hear everybody speculate,” said Lori Davis, an advocate for missing persons. “It’s been brutal to sit back and even watch and it's not happening to me, it’s just happening to someone I care a lot about.”

Davis called the negative attention Brittany received the “ugly side” of social media but said the positive side was getting Tyler's name out there. Brittany said she would like to see law enforcement agencies improve the way adult missing persons cases are handled.

“We need to have more written rules and laws in place because we do for children and we do for elderly, but we don’t for people that are over 18,” Brittany said. “[A detective] said, ‘I have 15 cases,’ and I said, ‘I have one husband and my son has one father,’ so people really do just kind of shove you down. … It’s sad to see how often that happens in this kind of situation.”

Brittany asks anyone with information on Tyler’s disappearance to contact police – and she has a message for Tyler himself. 

“I would tell him that I love him and I would tell him that he would be really really proud of [our son] and me,” Brittany said through tears. “I would tell him that I haven’t given up and I never will.”

At the time of his disappearance, Tyler Davis was 5 feet 10, 170 pounds and had brown hair and brown eyes. He had a large birthmark on his right arm, chest and neck. He was last seen wearing a blue and green flannel shirt, blue jeans and Nike shoes. As of Thursday, he would be 34 years old. 

Anyone with any information on the disappearance of Tyler Davis may contact Columbus police at 614-645-4545 or Central Ohio Crime Stoppers’ anonymous tip line at 614-461-8477.

If you’re a family member of an individual with an unsolved missing persons or homicide case in Ohio, reach out to aboldizar@wcmh.com.