Vigil held for missing Westland teens in hopes of generating new tips to bring them home

DETROIT (WXYZ) - About 200 people attended a candle light vigil to help bring home two missing Westland teenagers.

“How many people do we have here, how many angels can we get involved in this situation?” asked Tim Duncan.  Duncan, a family friend, led the vigil for the missing teens tonight at Churchill High School in Livonia.  

Jourdan Bobbish, 17, will be a senior at the high school in the fall and 18-year-old Jacob Kudla graduated from there last year and is enrolled at Schoolcraft College.  The two friends vanished Sunday night after leaving Jacob’s uncle’s home on Detroit’s east side.

“Sheer faith.  Sheer faith.  I am going to bring my son home because there is no other choice.  That’s it.  No other choice,” said Jacob’s mother Virgie Kudla.

“I really don’t know what to say.  It’s humbling, and it does it give you extra hope and energy. “I really appreciate that,” said Jourdan’s father Mike Bobbish.”

 “I miss my brother.  I just want him to come home, he’s like my best friend,” Jillian Bobbish.

The boys had been driving Jacob’s white Chevrolet Cavalier.  Police found two men stripping the car next to an apartment building on Detroit’s west side.  Sources tell 7 Action News the men were also washing down the car.  The two friends were nowhere to be found.  No sign of them except for a cane that Jacob used for an old injury.   His uncle told 7 Action News earlier in the day that he had given him something for the pain that night.

“It’s scary, it really, really is,” said friend Amanda Yancey.  Yancey said that Jourdan planned to come to her house before disappeared.  They spoke at 11:08 that night.

“He answered the phone like normal Jordan and he never showed up,” said Yancey.  She said he did not sound like anything was wrong.  “The detective said they were just going through his phone, calling the last people he talked to,” she said.

Police arrested the two men caught stripping the car and call them persons of interest but said that so far they have been cooperating with investigators. 

Family members say they will not stop searching until their boys are found.

“Even when I’m handing out flyers in the scariest place in the world, the people are so warm. They’re rooting for you.  They’re looking for you.  We just need a tip.

Jacob’s uncle Richard Baxter told 7 Action News tonight that earlier in the police had him come in to the station and investigators asked him more questions about what happened the last time he saw the boys.  He said they also showed him pictures of several men and asked him if he recognized any of them.  

If you have any information on the whereabouts of Jacob and Jourdan please call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-SPEAK UP.   Tips may remain anonymous.