The Mysterious Case of Mekayla Bali
Families all over the world send their children off to school each morning, confident they’ll
be watched over throughout the day until they return home safely.
But on April 12, 2016, this was not the case for 16-year-old Mekayla Bali.
When Mekayla’s grandmother dropped her off at Sacred Heart High School that morning,
no one could have predicted that by day’s end, Mekayla would be reported as a missing person.
Security footage of Mekayla recorded at 12:02 pm that afternoon would become the last confirmed
sighting of the teenager in nearly four years.
In this video, we’ll examine the unusual and heartbreaking disappearance of Mekayla
Bali, and explore the most intriguing theories about why and how she vanished.
An Ordinary Day
In April 2016, Mekayla was a 16-year-old student at Sacred Heart High School in Yorkton, Saskatchewan.
Mekayla lived with her mother, Paula Bali, her maternal grandmother, Margaret and her
two younger siblings - Joshua and Eliyora.
Mekayla’s friends describe her as quiet but popular, sweet, sometimes shy, and a good
listener.
She loved music and reading.
She also played violin and had become interested in the drama program at her school.
Mekayla was a big fan of The Hunger Games series and video games like League of Legends,
and had hoped to become a teacher or a vet, inspired by her love of both children and animals.
Mekayla was, according to her mother, an ordinary teenager, which made her disappearance all
the more extraordinary.
Paula would later tell investigators that nothing unusual had happened in the hours
before Mekayla vanished.
In the morning, Paula and Mekayla put on makeup and listened to music together in the bathroom,
chatting casually about their upcoming days, before getting into the car with Mekayla’s
grandmother, Margaret Niebergall, who usually drove Mekayla to school and Paula to work.
Margaret dropped Mekayla off at Sacred Heart High School between 8:10 and 8:20 am.
When Margaret returned to the school in the afternoon to pick Mekayla up, the teenager
wasn’t waiting for her.
When Margaret went into the school to look for her granddaughter, she was told that teachers
and friends hadn’t seen Mekayla for much of the day.
Margaret drove to Paula’s office and informed her that Mekayla was not at school.
Paula first wondered if her daughter had left early to go to a music lesson she had scheduled.
She had a violin recital coming up and had been practicing for it just the night before.
But Mekayla wasn’t at her lesson, either.
Back at their home, Paula checked a “cash fund” that she kept in the house in case
of emergencies.
Mekayla had access to the money, and if she’d planned to run away, Paula thought, she would
have taken it with her.
But the cash had not been touched.
That evening, Paula reported her daughter missing to the Yorkton Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The Investigation Begins
By the next morning, investigators were beginning to trace Mekayla’s movements before her disappearance.
Family had been trying to reach Mekayla since realizing something was wrong, but by 7:00 am. on April 13th,
her phone had been turned off.
Over the next several months, thanks to footage from security cameras, cell phone records,
and the cooperation of Mekayla’s friends and family, a comprehensive timeline was assembled
following Mekayla’s activities on April 12th.
Mekayla had walked into school after her grandmother dropped her off.
She had logged onto Sacred Heart High School’s Wi-Fi network around 8:08 am, but by 8:26,
the 16-year-old had exited Sacred Heart through a back entrance.
Mekayla was next seen on a surveillance camera at a nearby convenience store; the footage
showed her walking along local railroad tracks.
She made her way to a TD Bank branch, arriving there before the bank had opened its doors.
She waited outside, talking on her phone, then hung up and went inside at 8:55.
She withdrew $55 from her bank account.
Mekayla then walked to a nearby pawn shop, Terry’s Pawn and Bargain.
The owner, Terry Heddon, reported that Mekayla wanted to find out the value of a silver ring.
Heddon told her that the ring wasn’t valuable enough for him to buy from her.
Heddon said Mekayla didn’t seem upset or in distress.
She just left the shop.
Mekayla’s next stop was a combination Tim Horton’s/Wendy’s restaurant, where surveillance
cameras recorded her buying a drink and taking a seat in a booth, facing away from the entrance.
With her backpack beside her, Mekayla sat in the booth and used her phone for around
13 minutes, turning every so often to look toward the restaurant’s doors.
Oddly, she appeared to take her phone apart and reassemble it during this period.
At 9:23, Mekayla left the restaurant through one of the exits, but immediately turned back
to walk through the area again and use a different exit.
A hardware store’s surveillance camera showed her walking north until she was out of frame.
But around 20 minutes later, at 9:42, she appeared on the camera again and made her
way back to Tim Horton’s.
When she walked back inside the restaurant, she appeared to be on a phone call.
She chose a new seat at a booth closer to the window, and this time she sat facing the doors.
“I Need Help”
At 10:12 am, Mekayla sent a text to her friend Shelby Hnatuk, one that puzzles investigators
and Mekayla’s family to this day.
It read, “Hey I need help.”
Within half an hour, Mekayla texted Shelby again: “Nevermind I figured it out.”
A short time later, Mekayla left the restaurant a second time, only to come back in again
after just a couple of minutes.
She took another phone call, and looked expectantly around the restaurant at 10:39.
By 10:43, she had hung up and approached an older woman sitting at a nearby table.
That woman told police that Mekayla had asked her for help, too, specifically if the woman
would help her rent a hotel room.
Mekayla didn’t name a particular hotel.
The woman told Mekayla no, and the teenager returned to her seat and made yet another phone call.
Just a few minutes later, she left the restaurant for the final time.
Mekayla walked back to Sacred Heart High School, texting Shelby “I’ll see you at lunch,”
and arrived at the school at 11:59 am.
While there, she reportedly told two fellow students that she was going to take a bus
to the city of Regina for a vacation.
By 12:02 pm, Mekayla was seen walking back out of Sacred Heart.
Surveillance footage captured her rounding a corner and disappearing from view as she
walked away from the school.
These are the last known images of Mekayla Bali.
Though security footage of Mekayla only confirms her whereabouts until 12:02 pm, eye-witness
accounts next placed her at the Trail Stop Restaurant, about a mile from her school.
The restaurant is connected to a bus station, and witnesses there saw Mekayla buy and eat
poutine for lunch.
An employee at the bus depot remembered speaking with Mekayla, who wanted to know what time
the bus to Regina was leaving.
The employee told her - 5:00 pm, but said Mekayla didn’t purchase a ticket.
Mekayla reportedly left the Trail Stop Restaurant around 1:45 pm.
Possible Plans
While the surveillance footage and text messages gathered by investigators provided a very
clear picture of what Mekayla had been doing the day she disappeared, they also raised
many questions.
Mekayla had obviously spoken with someone, possibly more than one person, on the phone
throughout the morning, and her behavior in Tim Horton’s indicated she may have been
waiting for somebody.
She asked for help renting a hotel room, but then told classmates she planned to take a
bus out of town.
What exactly was Mekayla’s plan that day?
Paula Bali maintains that her daughter was not the type to run away from home, and nothing
Mekayla would need for a trip was missing from the Bali house: her makeup, phone charger,
and medicine were all left behind.
But revelations from Mekayla’s friends complicated the case even further.
On April 11th, 2016, the day before she went missing, Mekayla had gone to a fast food restaurant
for lunch with Shelby Hnatuk and another friend, Oksana Yakiwchuk.
Shelby and Oksana later told investigators that at lunch, Mekayla spoke about traveling
somewhere such as Moose Jaw or Prince Albert, or possibly Saskatoon, all cities within Saskatchewan.
Shelby also asked Mekayla on April 11th about a boy named Josh, who Mekayla had talked about
before, but Mekayla did not respond.
Another classmate of Mekayla’s, Amy Liang, told investigators that Mekayla had told her
a man named Christopher was traveling to the province to meet her.
After school on April 11th, at 4:35 pm, Mekayla texted Oksana and asked for a ride to the
bank the following day.
According to phone records, Mekayla also called TD Bank’s customer service line three separate
times that evening, checking her balance and making a transfer of $25.
Throughout the evening of April 11th, Mekayla texted Shelby, Amy, and an ex-boyfriend.
She asked Amy for help, a sentiment she would echo the following day in her text to Shelby,
but didn’t respond when Amy asked her to explain.
Her texts to Shelby and her ex-boyfriend were about being unhappy.
She told her ex she was thinking about spending a few days in Regina.
Finally, on the morning of her disappearance, at 6:41 am, Mekayla texted Oksana, “Can
you take me to the bank?”, asking for help once again with the errand she would end up
completing on foot, after she left Sacred Heart High School.
Why was it so important to Mekayla to visit the bank the day she went missing?
If she was contemplating a trip out of town, as she suggested to some of her friends, her
withdrawal of $55 wouldn’t get her very far.
And why would she leave behind essentials such as makeup and medication if her intention
was to board a bus and head to a different city?
In the nearly four years since Mekayla was last seen, no concrete answers to these questions
have been found.
Theories, A Suspect, and A Sighting
Since 2016, Mekayla Bali’s case has gained attention across Canada and even in the United
States, with many online sleuths speculating about where she may have gone, with whom,
and where she might be today.
A popular theory is that Mekayla had been communicating with someone online and was
planning to meet that person on April 12th, 2016.
Even Paula Bali said of the Tim Horton’s security footage - “This is absolutely unusual
behavior for Mekayla...
It seemed like she was waiting for someone.”
Shelby Hnatuk told CBC News that Mekayla had connected with people online in the past.
She remembered at least four, but said that the interactions never lasted too long.
She recalled - “I never liked the idea of her messaging guys online because it's kind
of sketchy but she wouldn't listen to me.
She did her own thing…’.”
Shortly before she disappeared, Mekayla had told her friend Oksana that she had $5000
in her bank account, but records show she had a much smaller amount.
Some have theorized that Mekayla’s preoccupation with getting to the bank that day, as well
as checking her balance the night before, may have been because she was waiting for
someone to deposit money into her account to help her leave Yorkton.
In a huge setback for the investigation, the phone calls Mekayla made throughout the morning
on April 12th didn’t register on her Telus mobile network account.
This is usually the case when calls are made through social media apps.
Mekayla’s friends reported that she used apps to communicate, including Snapchat and
Instagram, and possibly Kik, an anonymous messaging app.
Messaging platforms like Kik have become popular in recent years, but their anonymous nature
and lack of parental controls, have made them an attractive method for predators looking
to communicate with possible victims.
U.S. privacy laws often prevent the chat logs on these apps from being released, which can
be a setback for investigations.
It’s even been suggested that Mekayla may have been in possession of a second cell phone,
possibly provided to her by someone she was planning to meet as a way to avoid detection.
Similarly, neither the Trail Stop Restaurant nor the bus station had security cameras,
something a predator might have taken into consideration when planning to meet a young girl.
The investigation briefly led to a man named Rick Breit, who lives in Saskatoon and believes
he may be Mekayla’s father, though this has never been confirmed.
Police got in touch with him by phone just days after Mekayla disappeared, and a few
months later, they visited his home to search and take DNA samples.
But officials have said that no evidence points to Breit being involved in Mekayla’s disappearance.
As for Mekayla’s mother, some online sleuths have wondered if Mekayla’s home life was
as typical as Paula has claimed.
Pointing to the family’s possible money problems and the lack of a father figure in
Mekayla’s life, some have suggested that the Bali family was struggling and Mekayla
chose to leave her home.
The RCMP have never named a suspect in this case, but they have released information about
a person of interest reportedly seen at the Trail Stop Restaurant when Mekayla was there.
The man has a large tattoo of a cross on his forearm, and the RCMP hope to identify him
with the public’s help.
Though sightings of young women matching Mekayla’s description have trickled in over the years,
a possible sighting in August 2019 infused the investigation with new hope.
A man called Paula Bali on August 8th and told her he believes he spoke to Mekayla in
Edmonton, Alberta, more than 500 miles from Yorkton.
The man reported that he spoke to a young woman for a few minutes outside a pool hall
called the Highrun Club in March of 2019.
When he saw a social media post about Mekayla sometime later, he recognized her.
Unfortunately, there is no surveillance footage from this reported encounter; the club does
have security cameras, but by the time the man reported his sighting of Mekayla, the
footage from that day had already been taped over.
The man told Paula that the woman he spoke to seemed naive and sweet, and out of place
in the rough area, like she didn’t belong there.
Paula says this description matches Mekayla, telling media outlets - “She is a very gentle
soul and she comes across that way.”
Paula reported the tip to the RCMP.
Social media is at the center of this case, and Mekayla’s accounts remain intact, frozen in time.
Before she disappeared, she had an Instagram account that featured plenty of selfies and
photos with her friends, but another account reportedly exists under her name.
This profile has many followers, but no photos.
The “About Me” section consists of one word: “Goodbye.”
Shelby sent Mekayla a message on Snapchat the day she went missing.
Three months later, Shelby saw the message had been read.
She sent another message on graduation day - when Mekayla should have been at the ceremony
with her.
That message has never been opened.
Paula Bali continues to diligently search for anyone who might have information about
her daughter’s whereabouts.
There is a $50,000 (Canadian) reward for Mekayla’s safe return to her family.
What do you believe happened to Mekayla Bali?
Did she perfectly plan and execute her own disappearance, or did she walk out of the
Trail Stop Restaurant and into harm’s way?
Did someone help her get out of Yorkton?
& Above all, where is she now?
Share your theories and thoughts in the comments below.
Numbers to call with information:
Royal Canadian Mounted Police tip line: 639-625-4100 Saskatchewan Crime Stoppers: 1-800-222-8477