11 runaway children found in two months by U.S. Marshals Service's New Orleans office

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• BY KATELYN UMHOLTZ | STAFF WRITER

Eleven missing or endangered runaways were found in August and September by the U.S. Marshals Service's New Orleans office. Among them were a 16-year-old boy who authorities suspect was involved with guns and New Orleans street gang activity and a 13-year-old girl who was found in Nashville, Tennessee.

The agency said several arrests were made during the two-month effort but did not specify how many. One involved a man accused of aggravated statutory rape, the Marshals Service said.

Between Oct. 1, 2019, and the latest operation, the New Orleans office of the Marshals Service said deputies found nine other missing children. Among them:

• Two brothers, ages 6 and 9, in New Orleans East in March. Their mother was arrested, accused of killing an 11-year-old son in Laurel, Mississippi. 
• A missing pregnant teen. Her boyfriend, an escapee from the Orleans Parish Juvenile Justice Center, was arrested.

A child in Lafourche Parish. In conjunction with the child's rescue, the Marshals Service said authorities confiscated a stolen AR-15 and drugs. 

Trinity Mount Ministries - NCMEC - Active Missing Children Posters / Active AMBER Alerts - UPDATE - 09/30/2020

Missing Children Posters Below

Active AMBER Alerts

Name	Missing From	Issued For	Alert Date
Breasia Terrell	Davenport, IA	IA	Jul 15, 2020
Armaidre Argumon	Wells, TX	TX	Sep 18, 2020
Terran Butler	Millcreek, UT	UT	Sep 28, 2020

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Notice: The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children® certifies the posters on this site only if they contain the NCMEC logo and the 1-800-THE-LOST® (1-800-843-5678) number. All other posters are the responsibility of the agency whose logo appears on the poster.

Construction worker called 911 after girl at center of AMBER Alert was crying in car

Dallas police confirmed around 11 a.m. Wednesday that the girl had been located.

Construction worker called 911 after girl at center of AMBER Alert was crying in car

Volume 9

Author: Jennifer Prohov (WFAA), Eline de Bruijn

A 3-year-old girl who was at the center of an AMBER Alert Wednesday was found safe after a construction worker spotted her abandoned in a vehicle.

The girl was inside the car when it was stolen overnight Wednesday from a 7-Eleven in Dallas.

Rejinaldo Huerta was working in a Dallas neighborhood when he and his brother noticed the girl was crying inside a vehicle and banging her hands on the window, he told WFAA.

He then called 911 and looked for any parents around, he said. He got her out of the car, gave her water and tried to make her feel safe until officers arrived, he said.

Police say around 11 a.m. Wednesday, the girl was found safe in the 1100 block of Mountain Lake Road.

The girl was taken to Children's Medical Center where she was in good condition with no signs of any injury, police said.

The car was stolen with the girl inside around 12:30 a.m. after her mother had run into 7-Eleven in the 2400 block of West Ledbetter Drive, police said.

Police say an unknown suspect entered the vehicle and left the location with the vehicle, which had the child inside.

A regional and statewide AMBER Alert was requested in the search for the girl, police said shortly before 5 a.m. An alert was sent out to Texans' phones around 7:15 a.m.

The investigation remains ongoing and will be investigated by Dallas Police Department Youth Operations.

WFAA obtained surveillance footage of the vehicle parking on the street near Mountain Lake Road and Polk Street.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective DaShaud Young at 214-336-1878 or deshaud.young@dallascityhall.com. Case number is 169450-2020.

Child Protective Services was notified of the incident.

Alex Rozier contributed to this report.

Trinity Mount Ministries - NCMEC - Active Missing Children Posters / Active AMBER Alerts - UPDATE - 09/24/2020

Missing Children Posters Below

Active AMBER Alerts

Name	Missing From	Issued For	Alert Date
Breasia Terrell	Davenport, IA	IA	Jul 15, 2020
Armaidre Argumon	Wells, TX	TX	Sep 18, 2020

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Notice: The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children® certifies the posters on this site only if they contain the NCMEC logo and the 1-800-THE-LOST® (1-800-843-5678) number. All other posters are the responsibility of the agency whose logo appears on the poster.

Select an image to view the poster for one of these missing children.

35 missing teens recovered in Ohio, U.S. Marshals say

by: Nexstar Media Wire

Authorities have recovered 35 missing Ohio teenagers in the northeastern part of the state as part of a joint law enforcement operation, according to KTLA sister station WJW in Cleveland.

The missing and endangered children were between the ages of 13 and 18, and just over 20% of them were tied to human trafficking, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

In a news release, officials said only five cases that were referred to the Marshals Task Force remain open.

The United States Marshal for the Northern District of Ohio has created a permanent Missing Child Unit based on the results of Operation Safety Net, an effort that included local and federal law enforcement, the press release states.

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• AG Barr announces additional $100 million in grants to combat human trafficking

• U.S. Marshals find 39 endangered or missing children during operation in Georgia

The missing children were recovered in Cleveland, Euclid, Akron, Mansfield, Columbus, and Miami, Florida.

The Cleveland Division of Police, East Cleveland Police Department, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office, and Newburgh Heights Police Department assisted with the operation.

Anyone with tips about missing children can call the tip line at 1-866-492-6833.

CARD Team Develops Checklist to Aid Searches for Missing Autistic Children

Every Second Counts!

A member of a search team looks for Maddox Ritch in 2018 in Gastonia, North Carolina.

The search for a missing 6-year-old with autism in 2018 left a profound impression on the North Carolina community where the boy went missing—and on the FBI’s teams that specialize in finding children who suddenly disappear.

Hundreds of law enforcement and search and rescue personnel assisted in the search for Maddox Ritch, who walked away from a park in Gastonia on September 22, 2018. His body was found five days later partially submerged in a creek near the park. His drowning was accidental and it likely occurred soon after he disappeared. But the outcome—following extraordinary search efforts that included playing the boy’s mother’s voice and music he liked over a loudspeaker to draw him out—left some wondering how they can better prepare for the next time.

Since then, a special agent on the FBI team that assisted in the search for Maddox has developed a one-page questionnaire for investigators to use when a child with autism goes missing.

“I wanted to make sure that if I had another opportunity, I’d be ready,” said Special Agent James Granozio, who works in the Bureau’s Charlotte Field Office and also leads one of the FBI’s four regional Child Abduction Rapid Deployment (CARD) Teams. These teams are composed of agents, intelligence analysts, operational specialists, and behavioral analysts who deploy on short notice when police departments request FBI assistance in missing child cases.

After the Maddox case, Granozio learned all he could about autism and autistic children, reaching out to local and national organizations for information. The feedback led to the development of the checklist of baseline questions that Granozio said should be asked immediately of parents or caregivers of missing autistic children.

“I want to know from the family early on: Does the child have a tracking mechanism? Is the child afraid of water or do they like water? If they like water, do they know how to swim?” said Granozio. “What about traveling at night? Is the child scared at night? Will they hunker down or will they like to move? All these things I want to know early on, and hopefully we can save a life.”

“He was a little boy that was just running around having a good time. And he died. We all wanted to know what we could learn from it to hopefully prevent it from happening again.”

James Granozio, special agent, FBI Charlotte

One of the autism specialists Granozio contacted during his research said the checklist was a good idea, particularly if time is critical. “Having a checklist and a fact sheet about a child can be very helpful, especially if the child has specific interests,” said Kim Stroble, clinic director of the Early Autism Project in Rock Hill, North Carolina. “Given that no child or person with autism is the same, I think this is great.”

The questionnaire has been circulated among the FBI’s CARD Team, which includes approximately 75 members in FBI field offices across the country. They, in turn, have distributed the material to local law enforcement agencies during training exercises on child abductions and joint search and rescue operations. The CARD Team holds multiple table-top-style exercises every year to prepare local law enforcement on how to properly respond to the infrequent events.

“Most of these departments have never dealt with a true child abduction before,” said Special Agent Christina Bedford, who manages the CARD Team program from the Bureau’s Crimes Against Children and Human Trafficking Unit at FBI Headquarters. “We routinely give out a copy of the questionnaire to our local and state partners during CARD Team deployments that involve an autistic child. And we advise them how to work a neighborhood investigation, how to do these searches—looking everywhere a child could be hidden or trapped. I think we really break it down and put into perspective that you need to start from square one.”

Maddox Ritch

“I wish it had turned out differently and we could have reunited that little boy with his parents. But a new tool to help other investigators is at least something positive to come out of this tragedy.”

Robert Helton, chief, Gastonia Police Department

Hundreds of law enforcement and search and rescue personnel assisted in the search for Maddox Ritch, who walked away from Rankin Lake Park in Gastonia, North Carolina, on September 22, 2018. His body was found five days later partially submerged in a creek near the park.

During a briefing following Maddox's disappearance (above), Gastonia Police Department Chief Robert Helton was joined by FBI Charlotte Special Agent Jason Kaplan.

When the CARD Team deploys, Bedford said, trainings provided to our law enforcement partners have proven to be particularly beneficial because everyone already knows how to work alongside the CARD Team. “So when the CARD Team comes in, the lead investigative agency doesn’t need to waste time developing a plan, they’ve got a very effective playbook that they can roll out immediately. And I think local departments really appreciate that.”

Gastonia Police Department Chief Robert Helton said things moved very quickly in the Maddox case, and it helped that his department had relationships in place with the local FBI. His department reached out to the Charlotte Field Office, which led to activation of the CARD Team.

“My initial thought was, ‘We need all the help we can get right now,’” Helton recalled in a recent interview. “You know, every second counts when you have a child that’s missing. You have to act very quickly, and I think it was helpful for us to already have that established relationship.”

“I really appreciated the way the FBI came to town and worked with us,” Helton added. “The outpouring of support from law enforcement partners, the FBI, and the Gastonia community was overwhelming. I wish it had turned out differently and we could have reunited that little boy with his parents. But a new tool to help other investigators is at least something positive to come out of this tragedy.”

Time is always of the essence when CARD Teams are involved. “The clock is really ticking,” Bedford said. “In these cases, we would hope they would call on us as soon as possible to get involved before we lose evidence that may help recover the child.”

In May, a 14-year-old autistic boy went missing in Mississippi and a CARD Team deployed to support local investigators. Bedford said that the new questionnaire played a role in how the search teams conducted their ground searches. The boy was later recovered eight miles away in Tennessee.

The questionnaire, which is only available to law enforcement, has been part of the CARD Teams’ deployment toolkits for more than a year now. Granozio and Gastonia Police Chief Helton both view it as the rare positive development from the Maddox Ritch case.

“He was a little boy that was just running around having a good time. And he died,” Granozio said. “So we all wanted to know what we could learn from it to hopefully prevent it from happening again.”

The CARD Team

The FBI’s CARD Team formed in 2005 and first deployed a year later. Today the CARD Team is composed of four regional teams that have deployed more than 170 times. They are designed to provide investigative and technical resources and serve as advisors during investigations. The CARD team works closely with special agent profilers from the Bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Unit 3, both in training and on deployments. BAU-3 focuses on Crimes Against Children and authored the time-tested, research-based Child Abduction Response Plan, which informs how team members operate and interact with personnel leading a dynamic investigation. During deployments for example, profilers may help investigators design behaviorally-based interview strategies to elicit the most helpful information or develop media strategies to engage the public.

Trinity Mount Ministries - CyberTipline - NCMEC - Report Abuse! 1-800-843-5678

NCMEC’s CyberTipline is the nation’s centralized reporting system for the online exploitation of children. The public and electronic service providers can make reports of suspected online enticement of children for sexual acts, extra-familial child sexual molestation, child pornography, child sex tourism, child sex trafficking, unsolicited obscene materials sent to a child, misleading domain names, and misleading words or digital images on the internet.

What Happens to Information in a CyberTip?

NCMEC staff review each tip and work to find a potential location for the incident reported so that it may be made available to the appropriate law-enforcement agency for possible investigation. We also use the information from our CyberTipline reports to help shape our prevention and safety messages.

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A trusted adult can offer advice, help you report, and help you deal with other issues. It could be your mom, dad, an aunt, a school counselor, or anyone you trust and are comfortable talking to. You can also “self report” by making a report on your own to the CyberTipline.

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Having a sexual exploitative image of yourself exposed online is a scary experience. It can make you feel vulnerable and isolated, but remember, others have been in the same situation as you – and they’ve overcome it. Learn the steps you can take to limit the spread of the content.