Wazineh Suleiman, 30, of Cartersville
Wazineh and her husband Abed Suleiman
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CARTERSVILLE, Ga -- The man whose wife was missing for six days last week, held a news conference to explain what happened. Abed Suleiman said his wife Wazineh spent six nights in a women's shelter, not because she was afraid of him, but because she felt like she dishonored her family.
It was a story that captured the hearts of many Cartersville residents who volunteered on searches and put up missing person flyers across the county.
On Thursday we learned that she was safe, but there was no explanation where she was or why she left. Today she is at her home on Law Road in Cartersville with her husband and her five children.
Her husband said he came home from an aborted hunting trip Friday, April 8, 2011 and his wife wasn't at home with their five children. Suleiman said he knows now that his wife went out shopping. He said when he called her she lied about where she was. "For us in our culture and our ways of life that's something very big," Suleiman said. "We take that very seriously when you lie to a spouse."
Abed was 18 and his wife Wazineh was 17 when they were married, part of an arrangement made by their families. Suleiman said the situation snowballed and his wife felt like she couldn't come home. "If everybody finds out that she left her family, she lied and at that point she was out overnight," he said. Suleiman said she slept one night in her car, and the next morning a police officer took her to a women's shelter in Cobb County.
Suleiman said he told his wife one thing he regrets. "I even told her in a text message 'I'm going to kill you', of course after all of this that was a very worst choice of words I could have used.
When asked what he meant by that statement, Suleiman said "What I meant to her was we were going to be in a heap of trouble," he said. "Of course I don't mean that literally."
Wazineh Salmons car was found in a parking lot on Highway 92 in Cherokee County last Tuesday. Her husband said she was in the shelter since Saturday. He said she stayed there for the next six nights. On Thursday the shelter notified Bartow County investigators she was there. And after one more night, she returned home.
Suleiman said his wife came home after talking to her family and seeing the support she had at home. Wazineh Suleiman was inside her house during the news conference. Her husband said she didn't want to talk to the media.