Missing Mississippi woman apologizes for worrying family

A Mississippi woman who turned up 11 days after last being seen in Cape Girardeau, Mo., has apologized for worrying her family and wasting police resources in a disappearance that she admits was on her own accord.

Jeanna R. Martin, 29, of Kokomo, Miss., issued the statement to media in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, all of which had written stories at the request of the woman's family which said they had "feared the worst."

"My failure to contact my family and let them know I was all right led them to believe reports that I was missing," she said in the statement that was sent from the sheriff's department in Marion County, Miss. She apologized "to all involved for causing undue stress."

Martin was reported missing July 9 after a car she was driving from Hannibal, Mo., to Kokomo for a friend got a flat tire. She apparently was picked up by a truck driver five miles north of Cape Girardeau and went on a road trip before ending up in Columbia, S.C.

She called her family from there and asked them to come pick her up.

Doug Barnes, an investigator with the Marion County Sheriff's Department, said she had been questioned and released.