Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Beyonce's Former Backup Dancer Found Safe, New Jersey Police Say

By Danielle Tcholakian | October 25, 2016 3:36pm | Updated on October 25, 2016 6:39pm
 The North Bergen Police Department found dancer Shirlene Quigley after she went missing.
The North Bergen Police Department found dancer Shirlene Quigley after she went missing.
View Full Caption
Facebook/Broadway Dance Center

HELL'S KITCHEN — A dancer who has toured with Beyonce, Missy Elliott and Rihanna was found after going missing from Port Authority Bus Terminal, according to North Bergen County Police police. 

Shirlene Quigley, 32, works as a choreographer, dancer and teacher and lives in New Jersey, her father Brad Quigley said. Investigators located her and said she was being treated at an "undisclosed location," the North Jersey police department tweeted Tuesday. 

The elder Quigley said his daughter had been at a bridal store in Manhattan on Saturday where she "was not acting herself."

"She even tried to run out with a dress on," Brad Quigley told DNAinfo New York by phone from his home in Burbank, California. "The police stopped her, but didn't file a report on her because she was so nice and it was obviously a strange moment.

"She doesn't have any drug or mental issues, but it almost seems she has some kind of mental thing with a religious aspect," he said.

Quigley described his daughter as a "very dependable, outgoing, honest individual."

"It doesn't make sense" that she would just disappear, he said.

The father and daughter speak by phone "every single night," the father added.

They last spoke on Friday night, when she sounded "very euphoric," he said.

He received a call from her cellphone at 6 p.m. on Saturday, he said, but the voice on the other line was with the NYPD's 10th Precinct, informing him his daughter had left her phone at the bridal store.

They're on the same family cellphone plan, so he expected to get a panicked call from her later about her missing phone — but he never did, he said.

He later determined from her landlord that she had left her home in North Bergen, N.J., at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

North Bergen Police Department detectives told him a witness saw her on Sunday morning at 1 a.m. getting on a bus at the Port Authority, wearing the same outfit her landlord described: a pink jacket with a fuzzy collar, blue jeans and heels.

Detectives told him her car was found in Manhattan on 56th Street, Quigley said. He did not specify whether it was on the east or west side.

On Monday afternoon, he learned his daughter's Facebook page had been taken down. Detectives told him they were working to determine whether she took it down herself.

Meanwhile, the dance community his daughter was part of mobilized a social media campaign spreading her photo and the news that she was missing.

They were joined by Rihanna and Missy Elliott, both of whom posted about Quigley on their respective Instagram pages Monday night.

 

 

 

 

It was unclear what time she was found and where she was located, but police said she was "safe."