Tennessee woman missing for 3 weeks after cross-country trip with boyfriend

A Tennessee woman who went on a cross-country trip with her boyfriend has not been seen or heard from for three weeks, according to family members.

Nikki Alcaraz, 33, left her home in Cheatham County with Tyler Stratton in early May to visit an uncle in Southern California, Nashville ABC affiliate WKRN reported. Stratton remains missing as well.

The two were last seen together on May 4 in Moriarty, N.M., a population 2,000 city that lies about 35 miles east of Albuquerque on Interstate 40.

According to a police report, the two had a tense physical fight in the city, WKRN reported. A witness saw Stratton punch Alcaraz in the face, and when cops arrived, she had a black eye while Stratton’s nose and mouth were bleeding.

“He beat her up pretty badly,” Alcaraz’s brother, Josh, told Phoenix Fox affiliate KSAZ. “A truck driver had to pull him off of her, call the police, the police picked him up, took him a couple exits down and dropped him off.”

Officers with the Torrance County sheriff’s office in New Mexico separated the two. Neither chose to press charges. A family friend drove to Moriarty on May 6 to check in with Alcaraz, according to her sister, Toni. They were supposed to depart the state together.

“That morning when they were supposed to leave, she told him that she had to go back and find Tyler because she had a bad feeling, and so [the friend] left without her,” Toni Alcaraz told WKRN. That friend was the last person to see Alcaraz alive.

Alcaraz texted her sister again on May 8, and a license plate reader recorded her Jeep Wrangler driving through Flagstaff, Ariz., on May 9. However, her cell phone has been disconnected, and no one has heard from Alcaraz or Stratton since the May 8 text message.

“There’s a lot of possibilities that I’m scared of after not hearing from her for three weeks now,” Toni told KABC in Los Angeles.

Stratton is also wanted on an arrest warrant back home in Cheatham County, Tenn., according to WKRN. Authorities say he failed to appear for a probation violation connected to a theft charge.