“I didn’t say anything because I was asked not to,” said Karen Philips, the mother of missing U.S. postal employee Kierra Coles.

Karen Philips, the mother of missing U.S. postal employee Kierra Coles, said she prays every night for a good night’s sleep because she knows when she wakes up, her nightmare begins again.

“It feels like a replay. Every day, the same feeling,” said Philips. “Day after day.”

Philips’ daughter Kierra was three months pregnant when she suddenly disappeared in October 2018.

After two years of no answers, Philips told NBC 5 Investigates she was ready to reveal what Chicago detectives told her not to disclose at the time of her daughter’s disappearance.

“I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to mess up the case, “ said Philips

Early in the investigation, a chilling video of a postal worker thought to be Kierra Coles surfaced. The Oct. 3 video captured at 11:45 a.m. from a neighbor’s surveillance camera showed what many believed at the time to be Kierra dressed in her postal uniform walking past her parked car in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood.

“A woman calls down to me and says her husband has video,” said NBC Chicago’s Regina Waldroup, who at the time was in the neighborhood knocking on doors and looking for leads. “He’s saying, ‘There she is walking down the street. You see her and she’s in her postal uniform and that’s her. That’s her!'”

Waldroup said that everyone covering the story thought this was going to be the big break in the case.

“I’m thinking she’s walked into somebody’s car, so with all the video that they took off the blocks, that we would be able to see exactly what car she got into,” Waldroup said.

A still frame of the video went on Kierra’s missing posters, and the video aired nationwide.

A Break in the Case?

At the time, Karen Philips was at home watching the video again and again on her cell phone. She went to bed that night thinking something about the video was off.

“It’s a mother thing. You just know your child,” said Philips. “That’s not her walk. She was a little bit smaller and a little bit shorter.”

The next day, Philips said she went down to the Chicago police station to talk with detectives about her concerns that it wasn’t her daughter on the video after all.  Philips said that Chicago detectives told her that wasn’t her daughter on the video.

“He says don’t tell anybody that’s not your daughter,” said Philips, noting that the video was of another woman who lived down the street and worked at the post office.

Philips admitted she remained quiet for years, not saying a word about the video, saying, “Now, I have nothing to lose. I mean, it’s been two years, and you [investigators] have came up with nothing.”

Postal inspectors who are the lead agency in the Coles case would not confirm that the video is of another postal employee but did tell NBC 5 Investigates that they have a timeline of Kierra’s whereabouts the night of Oct. 2 before she went missing. More at NBC Chicago