Police are looking for a 15-year-old girl named Kathleen Diaz who they say went missing from her home at 140 West 104th Street on July 25 at 8 a.m. She is 4’11” and 120 pounds, police say.
Anyone with information in regards to the missing is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577.
For crying out loud this is the third young person reported missing in two months or so. What the hell is going on?
Is this more common than I think, or is there an increase in missing persons lately?
NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline and West Side Rag do a great service by informing the neighborhood and also gathering information.
This, I believe is a very high Purpose for both.
Regarding what Zulu wrote above, the Polly Klass Foundation says on its website that in the U.S. some 1.6 to 2.8 teenagers run away from home. (And less than 1% of missing children are abducted by strangers.)
So, yes, Zulu, it’s more common than you apparently think. And I highly doubt that there is any increasing in missing teens “lately.”
Wow. I haven’t heard POlly Klaas’s name in a while. I grew up in the next town over from where she lived (a town between where she was taken and where she was found) and I was in the 4th grade when she disappeared.
I remember seeing a stack of missing posters on my teacher’s desk that were later in the trash. Not that I think we would have found her, but I was angry even then that the teacher didn’t pass out the flyers.
tl;dr Polly Klaas Foundation does great work that I hope we can put out of business some day.
Maybe by the time she was given the fliers Polly had already been found? She went missing on October 1, 1993 and was found on December 3rd.
I had the same anxiety as Zulu – there seem to be a lot of missing young women. I hope they are all returned home safe and sound – and I’m VERY glad that people are posting to try to help – but as we never hear what happens I’m left with fear that there is a pattern of some sort here and that our young women are at risk. I wish we could hear about the outcome too and that it is indeed young people going on a lark but returning home safe!
Sorry, I meant to say that “1.6 to 2.8 million teenagers run away from home each year.”
The vast majority of teenagers who run away from home aren’t out “on a lark.” Many have been physically and/or sexually abused by a parent, stepparent, or sibling. That’s the “pattern.”
I know. That’s what I wish, not what I think it is.
The same girl went ‘missing,’ and returned in 2013. https://columbiaspectator.com/news/2014/11/11/missing-13-year-old-upper-west-side-back-home
Sorry, that should have said 2014, not 2013. She was 13 years old at the time.