Family seeking answers in man's disappearance

A Pennsylvania man who moved to the Charlotte area just over a month ago to be with a man he met online has been reported missing, and the man his family says he met is dead.

Samuel Haugh, 21, originally from York, Pennsylvania, was reported missing May 5. His mother, Jennifer Haugh, said Samuel Haugh last spoke with his grandmother April 27, and April 28, he stopped communicating all together. His phone was apparently turned off May 1, she said.

"I want him found. We're just now getting the police to do something," she said.

Samuel Haugh, who goes by Sam, is "generally speaking a quiet and reserved person, at least as we know him. He worked a full-time job as a janitor. He never missed work. He saved every penny he ever made. Just a careful, quiet kid," his mother said.

Haugh, who is autistic, met 31-year-old Michael Olarte online and moved to North Carolina in April to be with him, Jennifer Haugh said. Olarte, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, was convicted on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill in 2019. He was arrested in Dallas the year before and accused of using a switchblade to stab a man 15 times in the back, right eye, left hand, back of the head and right arm. He was released from prison in October 2023 after serving around four and a half years behind bars.

It was a shock, Jennifer Haugh said, when Haugh moved to North Carolina to be with Olarte.

"It was an abrupt departure. This is a boy who didn't really ever travel or leave home," she said. "When we would go on vacations, and we love to travel, we would always say, 'you can come with us...' He never wanted to go or even leave home, never. Wouldn't get on an airplane. Didn't have a smart phone."

Jennifer Haugh said she found out about Olarte's past after filing a missing person's report.

"And then we started, like I found his FB page, I'm contacting everyone on his FB page. His mother called us and told us Michael was dead," she said.

Olarte died May 5 by suicide, according to a police report.

Sam Haugh's car was found empty outside a Hampton Inn in Salisbury.

Now, Haugh's family just wants answers.

"That's all we want, is an answer. We need to know what happened. Whatever happened, we just need to know what happened," Jennifer Haugh said.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is investigating Haugh's disappearance. The department declined to comment further.

The disappearance of Samuel Haugh is eerily similar to that of Andy Tench, a 31-year-old Belmont man who who was reported missing March 26 after he did not return home from a night out in Charlotte.

Tench went out in the early morning hours of March 25 to celebrate his birthday at The Bar at 316, an LGBTQ-friendly bar, according to his family. When he didn't return home and stopped responding to calls or texts, his family reported him missing. His car was found abandoned in Monroe.

D'Shaun Montrell Robinson, 26, was seen on surveillance footage making purchases at Dick's Sporting Goods and Target in Matthews using Tench's bank card, according to an affidavit from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. Surveillance footage from Target also shows Robinson using Tench's car.

Robinson told police that Tench died during sex, and that he disposed of Tench's body in a garbage can, but the waste management company said Tench's body would have been found when the trash was sorted.

Tench's body still has not been found.

Robinson was arrested on a variety of charges, including identity theft, larceny of a motor vehicle and concealing a death.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Family seeking answers in man's disappearance