Almost 400 kids remained missing at end of 2019, AG says
Nearly 400 children reported missing in Ohio in 2019 weren’t found by the end of the year, according to a new report from the Ohio attorney general’s office.
Of the 18,638 Ohio children reported missing in 2019, 18,246 — almost 98% — were recovered safely, according to Attorney General Dave Yost’s annual Children Clearinghouse Report.
Six children were eventually found dead: two accidents, two suicide, one homicide and one undetermined death, according to follow-up information provided by Yost spokesman Steve Irwin.
Of the 392 children reported missing last year who are still unaccounted for, 301 were listed as a runaways, according to Irwin.
Of the 18,638 children who went missing in 2019, 9,606 were female and 9,032 were male, according to the report. A total of 17,292 missing children were between the ages of 13 and 17.
Franklin County had the most missing-children reports — 4,884 — followed by Cuyahoga County with 2,571 reports.
The majority of cases — 10,598 cases, to be exact — involved runaways. Twenty-nine were abducted by a child’s parent or other family member (or by someone else on that parent’s behalf ) to deprive another person of visitation or custody rights. Two children were abducted by strangers.
There were 21 attempted child abductions in 2019, involving 12 girls and nine boys. Seven suspects were arrested.
More than half of the attempted abductions took place between 2 and 7 p.m., 48% involved suspects asking children for directions or help, 45% of the incidents occurred while the children were walking to or from school, 43% involved physical force or a weapon, and suspects were driving vehicles 38% of the time.
Including adults, in 2019 there were 2,168 Ohioans of any age who went missing under circumstances indicating that their physical safety may be in danger.
The attorney general’s office maintains a missing persons database and fields calls about missing children through a 24-hour hotline at 1-800-325-5604.
“No case is more difficult than one involving a missing child,” Yost said in a statement leading off the report. “No human being, after all, is more defenseless than a missing child.”