Mystery as nearly 50 children go missing from same city in one month alone

26 September 2023 , 14:47

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14-year-old Gideon Hefner, who was last seen on September 12 in American Township, Ohio (Image: Ohio Attorney General)

Police have been left perplexed and parents petrified after over 45 children went missing from the same city in just one month.

The number of missing young people in the Ohio city of Cleveland is on the rise with more than 1,000 reported missing so far this year according to latest figures. In August there were 35 missing minors reported, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s missing children website. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost described the trend as alarming but said the figures may be inflated by inconsistencies in how they are reported. This is something local police have admitted to in the past.

Mr Yost told News 5 Cleveland: “Yes, of course we are worried about that. Now, what we know is when we look behind the numbers, some of those represent repeated runaways and local police have talked about that.”

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Chloe Hadley - one of Ohio's many missing children (Ohio Attorney General)

Camryn Nicole Golias, 17, was last seen in Akron earlier this month (Ohio Attorney General)

The last available information on the total number of missing children was given in June at 1,072. This was 20 per cent up from the same time last year.

Nicola Bulley's children 'cried their eyes out' after being told 'mummy's lost'

Despite the alarming figure at the time of the initial reports 1,020 of those children had been returned home. Police chief Wayne Drummond said: "The vast majority of missing juveniles are runaways and sometimes habitual runaways. I don't say that to minimise missing juveniles. I say that to add context."

Maurice Hamrick is missing (Ohio Attorney General)

Honesty Howell is among the dozens who have vanished (Ohio Attorney General)

The missing children still remain a concern to authorities. “I am fearful of all kinds of things that fall through the cracks, that include missing children,” Mr Yost added. “I rely on the tenacity of a worried parent more than I do a harried bureaucrat whose job it is to put data into a computer.”

He said the state is now working with the University of Toledo to develop a new reporting system to help find any missing juveniles.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (Ohio Attorney General)

“Law enforcement can’t be everywhere and can’t see everything,” he said. “We rely on the people, the population because we have 11.7 million pairs of eyes out there that can keep an eye out.”

Newburgh Heights Police Chief John Majoy said earlier this year that the numbers of missing children between the ages of 12 and 17 remained unusually high. He said: "For some reason, in 2023, we've seen a lot more than we normally see, which is troubling in part because we don't know what's going on with some of these kids. Whether they're being trafficked or whether they're involved in gang activity or drugs."

A missing poster for Keshaun Williams (Ohio Attorney General)

Elijah Hill is one of the youngest to go missing (Ohio Attorney General)

President of Cleveland Missing and the police chief of Newburgh Heights, John Majoy, previously sounded the alarm on the surge in cases. He told FOX News in May: “For some reason, in 2023, we’ve seen a lot more than we normally see, which is troubling in part because we don’t know what’s going on with some of these kids — whether they’re being trafficked or whether they’re involved in gang activity or drugs.”

Charlie Jones