A University of Missouri student was charged Monday with abuse or neglect of a child just days after authorities announced that foul play is suspected in the disappearance of his wife, who came to the U.S. from China to study.
Joseph Elledge, 23, is jailed on a $500,000 cash-only bond. No attorney is listed for him in online court records. Elledge is a senior mechanical engineering student.
His wife, 28-year-old Menqi Ji Elledge, a graduate of the school, has been missing for more than two weeks. Columbia police spokesman Steven Sapp said the couple has a 1-year-old daughter who is in the care of a relative.
In the probable cause statement supporting the charges, detectives were advised that Elledge abused the toddler by striking her on the buttocks hard enough to cause severe bruising in February.
The girl's mother, who is identified only as M.E. in the document, had wanted to contact police but gave Elledge another chance after he promised he would never do it again. She sent another person a picture of the bruising, however, and officers examining the mother's iPad located pictures and videos of the bruising. It appeared from the thumbnail format of the images that someone had erased the full-sized photos, and the affidavit noted Joseph Elledge had access to the iPad for about a week before officers obtained it.
The affidavit said Joseph Elledge told officers on Friday that he did bruise the girl months earlier, saying initially that he did not know how it happened. He later told officers the girl was crying and would not stop. The bruising may have been caused by pinching the girl to distract her or by holding her too hard, Elledge told police.
The probable cause affidavit also noted he did not report his wife missing for about 36 hours. During that time, he took a long drive through unfamiliar remote areas of mid-Missouri, according to the affidavit.
Joseph Elledge hasn't been charged in her disappearance, but police announced Friday that the investigation has led detectives to suspect foul play. No details were released about what led to that determination. However, Sapp said police learned the couple had been having problems when Joseph Elledge divulged that during an on-camera interview with KRCG-TV.
In the interview, Elledge described his wife as a doting mother but said "we were growing kind of distant in the past few months." He said they had gone to Carthage, another Missouri town, for an internship over the summer and that he wasn't sure how she liked the small-town life. He added: "I know she was talking to somebody else on the side. I didn't know that until she had left."
Elledge said that when he awoke on the morning of Oct. 9, his wife was gone. He said he waited until 5:45 p.m. that day to report her missing because he thought she might have been running errands. Her phone, iPad, passport and clothes were left behind, but not her purse.
"I don't know where she could have gone," Elledge told KRCG. "I know she was supposed to meet somebody in the morning. I didn't know who else she was going to meet or what else she was going to do. It was really weird that she didn't take her phone or anything else like that."
Elledge told the station he thought she would return, adding "I think she is confused and scared."
University of Missouri spokesman Christian Basi said Menqi Elledge was awarded a master's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering in December 2014. She previously attended the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai. Basi said the university is aware of the missing-person case and its police department is ready to assist, if necessary.
Sapp said her family has traveled to Columbia and plans to stay there until there "some type of resolution."
"I think we are leaving all the options open and following up on every lead that presents itself," Sapp said.
NEW YORK (AP) — Tesla lost its crown as the world’s bestselling electric vehicle maker on Friday as a customer revolt over Elon Musk’s right-wing politics, expiring U.S. tax breaks for buyers and stiff overseas competition pushed sales down for a second year in a row.
Tesla said that it delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025, down 9% from a year earlier.
Chinese rival BYD, which sold 2.26 million vehicles last year, is now the biggest EV maker.
It's a stunning reversal for a car company whose rise once seemed unstoppable as it overtook traditional automakers with far more resources and helped make Musk the world's richest man.
For the fourth quarter, sales totaled 418,227, falling short of even the much reduced 440,000 target that analysts recently polled by FactSet had expected. Sales were hit hard by the expiration of a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicle purchases that was phased out by the Trump administration at the end of September.
Tesla stock was down nearly 3% at $436.85 in afternoon trading Friday.
Even with multiple issues buffeting the company, investors are betting that Tesla CEO Musk can deliver on his ambitions to make Tesla a leader in robotaxi services and get consumers to embrace humanoid robots that can perform basic tasks in homes and offices. Reflecting that optimism, the stock finished 2025 with a gain of approximately 11%.
The latest quarter was the first with sales of stripped-down versions of the Model Y and Model 3 that Musk unveiled in early October as part of an effort to revive sales. The new Model Y costs just under $40,000 while customers can buy the cheaper Model 3 for under $37,000. Those versions are expected to help Tesla compete with Chinese models in Europe and Asia.
For fourth-quarter earnings coming out in late January, analysts are expecting the company to post a 3% drop in sales and a nearly 40% drop in earnings per share, according to FactSet. Analysts expect the downward trend in sales and profits to eventually reverse itself as 2026 rolls along.
Investors have largely shrugged off the falling numbers, choosing to focus on Musk's pivot to different parts of business. He has been saying the future of the company lies with its driverless robotaxis service, its energy storage business and building robots for the home and factory — and much less with car sales.
Tesla started rolling out its robotaxi service in Austin earlier this year, first with safety monitors in the cars to take over in case of trouble, then testing without them. The company hopes to roll out the service in several cities this year.
To do that successfully, it needs to take on rival Waymo, which has been operating autonomous taxis for years and has far more customers. It also will also have to contend with regulatory challenges. The company is under several federal safety investigations and other probes. In California, Tesla is at risk of temporarily losing its license to sell cars in the state after a judge there ruled it had misled customers about their safety.
“Regulatory is going to be a big issue,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, a well-known bull on the stock. “We're dealing with people's lives.”
Still, Ives said he expects Tesla's autonomous offerings will soon overcome any setbacks.
Musk has said he hopes software updates to his cars will enable hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles to operate autonomously with zero human intervention by the end of this year. The company is also planning to begin production of its AI-powered Cybercab with no steering wheel or pedals in 2026.
To keep Musk focused on the company, Tesla’s directors awarded Musk a potentially enormous new pay package that shareholders backed at the annual meeting in November.
Musk scored another huge windfall two weeks ago when the Delaware Supreme Court reversed a decision that deprived him of a $55 billion pay package that Tesla doled out in 2018.
This story has been corrected to show that BYD sold 2.26 million vehicles last year, not 2.26.
AP video journalist Mustakim Hasnath contributed to this report from London.
FILE - The Tesla logo is displayed at a Tesla dealership Thursday, Mar. 13, 2025, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
