Update (Aug. 23, 2023, 11:25 a.m.): Police announced the 15-year-old was found and reunited with her family after she was spotted in a mall six weeks after her disappearance. Go here for updates.
A Maryland teenager has been missing for four weeks, and her parents believe she may have been lured by someone she met on social media.
The 15-year-old left her North Bethesda home July 11 and hasn’t been seen since.
“If she could be home she would be,” her mother said. “Someone’s taken her from us. I truly believe that she’s been taken.”
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The evening she disappeared, the teen kissed her mother goodnight and went to her room. When her mother later checked on her daughter, she was gone.
“She left her phone at home,” her mother said. “The circumstances under which she left were very strange. I mean, she took no money with her that she could have taken that was on the counter. She didn’t take her makeup bag.”
The teen's parents say this is unlike her and they’re scared.
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“She’s very deliberate when she makes decisions,” said her father. “She doesn’t make decisions very fast, so the circumstances are mind-boggling.”
“We believe that she was kind of groomed and lured online by somebody, and we’ve got evidence of that from social media,” her mother said. “And that, yes, she left, may have been voluntarily, but now she’s been abducted or she is somewhere that we don’t believe that she’s in control of her situation.”
Montgomery County police searched the area near the teen's home and found surveillance pictures showing her at the nearby Whole Foods on Executive Boulevard about 9 p.m. July 11. That’s the last time she was seen.
“It really does give us some concern that she could be in some danger, and not knowing where she is or who she’s with, it’s very concerning for us,” said Capt. Jeffrey Bunge with the Special Victims Division.
“We love you so much,” her mother said. “It doesn’t matter what’s happened. We just want you to come home safely, and if anyone knows anything, it doesn’t matter how small, we’re pursuing every single lead.”
The FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children are helping with the investigation.
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