(NewsNation) — Two years after graduate student Jelani Day disappeared, his mother is still searching for answers and the task force dedicated to the case has been disbanded.

Carmen Bolden Day remembers her thoughts when Jelani disappeared.

“My whole mindset was, ‘I’m praying for my son to be somewhere I can find him and I’m going to be able to bring him back home healthy and unharmed,’” she told NewsNation.

Unfortunately, Carmen’s prayers did not come true.

Jelani was a 25-year-old graduate student at Illinois State University, where he was studying speech pathology. He didn’t show up to his classes on Aug. 24, 2021. Surveillance video showed him leaving a marijuana dispensary that morning, then driving away in his car.

What isn’t known is what happened after.

“I reported him missing that Wednesday night,” Carmen said. “It was the next night when the car was found.”

Jelani’s car was found in Peru, Illinois, a small city of about 10,000 people roughly 60 miles north of the ISU campus. Carmen wasn’t aware of any reason her son would have had for visiting the town.

“He didn’t know anybody. To my knowledge, he didn’t know where Peru was. He never once mentioned Peru to me,” she said.

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Jelani’s car was found sitting in a wooded area yards away from a local YMCA. But there was no sign of Jelani or what might have happened to him.

One detail out of place was that his car was missing the license plates. Those plates have never been recovered, though Jelani’s wallet was found a week later. It was found in a residential area about a quarter mile from where the car was found.

Jelani’s money, credit and debit cards were all missing. But his ISU student lanyard was recovered near a highway as search teams and drones were deployed in an effort to locate the missing student.

Just days later, the partially clothed body of a black man was pulled from the nearby Illinois River by a Peru rive rescue team. The body was found three miles from the car.

The body was so severely decomposed it took nearly three weeks to positively identify Jelani. Authorities discouraged Carmen from viewing her son’s remains.

“The way they described his body was so horrific to me that I was scared to look at him,” she said.

The LaSalle County coroner determined the cause of death was drowning, but could not determine whether the manner of death was homicide, suicide or accident.

That determination only left Carmen with more questions, including how a good swimmer like her son could drown in the river. Questions that remain unanswered two years later.

For part two of Jelani’s case, tune into “NewsNation Now” on Wednesday.