FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Police are searching for a Fort Lauderdale woman who disappeared Thursday afternoon, one day before she was supposed to attend a hearing for a restraining order against her husband.

Josephine Frenna, 51, was reported missing after her 14-year-old son returned home from school and noticed she was gone. Police said her car keys and credit cards were inside her Galt Ocean Drive apartment, but she was nowhere to be found.

Frenna was last seen Thursday morning, when she took her son to the bus stop in front of their complex.

"She went back into her apartment," family friend Steve Stabile said during a news conference Friday outside the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. "At some point she left her apartment and then her whereabouts are unknown."

Frenna's family and friends said her disappearance is out of character.

"Josephine was the type of person that she'd speak to her mom and dad four or five times a day," Stabile said. "She'd speak to her sisters, her brothers four or five times a day."

Detectives said Frenna was in the process of filing for divorce and had an active domestic violence order against her husband. A hearing was scheduled for Friday morning.

Court papers handwritten by Frenna indicated that she and her son were afraid for their lives. She called her husband, Gerardo DiMarco, "dangerous" and said he threatened to throw her off the balcony.

DiMarco was questioned by detectives and is cooperating, Fort Lauderdale police Detective Kathy Collins said.

Crime scene investigators spent Friday morning rummaging through the garbage from the Dumpsters at her apartment complex, looking for any possible evidence.

"I don't know that a crime has been committed," Collins said. "Right now she is a missing person. Until we find out otherwise, we will treat it as that."

Anyone with information is asked to call Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS.