Teleka Patrick, of Kalamazoo, Mich., went missing on Dec. 5 and hasn’t been seen since.
The search for a missing Michigan doctor took a bizarre twist after a chart-topping gospel singer said the woman stalked him, prompting him to file a protection order against her. Marvin Sapp, a Grammy-nominated gospel crooner and Grand Rapids pastor, claimed that Teleka Patrick sent him more than 400 love letters, joined his congregation, contacted his children and even moved to Michigan from California to be closer to him, local WOOD-TV reported. Sapp, 46, filed the protection order in September, some three months before the 30-year-old doctor vanished, the station reported.
The stalking had gone on for at least a year, Sapp said. In at least one instance, Patrick even professed that Sapp was her husband, according to the order. In a statement to the station Thursday, Sapp said, “As a father of three and pastor of one of the largest congregations in west Michigan, I cannot take this kind of obsessive attention lightly.” Gospel singer Marvin Sapp, who serves as a pastor at a church in Grand Rapids, says Patrick stalked him, prompting him to file a protection order.
Gospel singer Marvin Sapp, who serves as a pastor at a church in Grand Rapids, says Patrick stalked him, prompting him to file a protection order. Patrick was last seen on Dec. 5 at her job at Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo, where she was a psychiatric resident. Later that evening, her abandoned 1997 Lexus was found with a flat tire by a highway in Portage, Ind., about 100 miles away. Authorities in Kalamazoo and Indiana were searching for her, and, so far, the case was being treated as a missing person. There were no suspects or signs of foul play, authorities said. Patrick, disappeared from Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo, Mich., on Dec. 5. Her gold Lexus was found 100 miles away in Indiana. Patrick posted a YouTube video in which she lovingly prepared breakfast for her ‘baby’ — but friends and family have no idea who that might have been. But her ex-husband, Ismael Calderon, told WOOD-TV earlier this week he suspected Patrick suffered from mental illness.
The two were married and lived in California from 2006 to 2011, but their relationship began to unravel after Patrick became delusional, paranoid and began hearing voices, Calderon said. Patrick’s parents have said she had no interest of mental illness. Calderon told the station, “She went to Michigan on purpose and I don’t believe it had anything to do with, ‘Oh, Michigan has a really great psychiatric residency program.’”
On the night she was last seen, Patrick tried to check into a hotel only a few miles from her apartment, but left without getting a room.
“What I heard is that there was somebody that she maybe felt that God wanted her to be with.” He added, “Every day that she’s still missing, it’s a danger. This is a red alert.”
