A 12-year-old Florida girl steals dad’s car and takes 14-year-old friend to meet online predator.
A 12-year-old Florida girl stole her father’s car and picked up her 14-year-old friend to meet an online predator in Louisiana, officials said this weekend.
Baby-faced Jade Gregory, of Union County, was reported missing last week after she hopped behind the wheel of her parent’s Ford Taurus, went to meet her pal Khloe Larson, then drove out of state.
‘We have cancelled our active missing children alert,’ the Union County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a statement Thursday morning shortly after the girls were found.
‘Jade Gregory and Khloe Larsen have been located safe in Bayou La Batre, Alabama,’ the statement posted to the department’s social media stated.
‘Many thanks to the multiple agencies involved throughout Florida, Alabama and Louisiana to include the FBI and FDLE [Florida Department of Law Enforcement].
‘Thank you for all the tips and information received.’
It was not immediately clear where exactly the children had been found, nor by whom. Police did not confirm Monday whether an outsider’s tip led to the discovery.
The pair are now safe and back with their families. An Amber Alert was issued for the youngsters on Wednesday at roughly 11:50am, and was resolved by 4pm. Since cancelled, the Missing Child Alert sent members of several states into a frenzy as fresh-faced images of the youngsters flashed across millions of billboards and television screens.
When the pair were apprehended, they had already traversed nearly 400 miles of land and most of Northern Florida, and were only a few dozen miles from making it through Alabama and into Mississippi.
At that point, the girls would have been on the home stretch of their journey toward Louisiana. Investigators did not divulge what part of the Bayou State the two had been traveling to.
The FBI now investigating a person they believe the two girls were planning to meet. The Bureau did not immediately respond to a Monday DailyMail.com request for comment.
The two kids had apparently been corresponding with an unknown person online and planned to meet him in Louisiana, according to reports.
Their sudden disappearance triggered a Missing Child Alert, and their youthful images were flashed across billboards and television screens across several Southern states.
Gregory drove her father’s truck all the way from the Gainesville area to Mobile, Alabama — a roughly five-hour trek. Authorities said they were not accompanied by an adult during their journey and they had voluntarily left their homes.
The girls were later shocked to see their images on a television in an Alabama convenience store — and eventually decided to turn themselves in to local police.
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