More than 1,000 children have gone missing in Ohio this year, in what officials call a “extraordinary surge” of missing minors. Although the vast majority of the 1,072 children reported missing in the state this year have been found, officials, parents, and community leaders are concerned about the alarming increase in reports.
According to News 5 Cleveland, more than 45 children have gone missing in the Cleveland-Akron area in September, adding to the 35 reported missing in August. Newburgh Heights Police Chief John Majoy, who is also the president of Cleveland Missing, a nonprofit dedicated to locating missing children, cautioned about the surge in missing children in May, saying he was concerned that some of the missing children had been victims of human trafficking or gang activity.
“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,” Majoy told Fox News.
While many of the youngsters who have gone missing in recent weeks have been recovered safely, others have yet to be seen or heard from. Keshaun Williams, 15, has been missing for more than 90 days, and volunteers with Cleveland Missing are still canvassing the neighborhood where he was last seen. Camryn Golias, 17, Teonnah Thompkins, 17, Maurice Hamrick, 14, Honesty Howell, 16, Elijah Hill, 16, and Gideon Hefner, 14, were all reported missing within days of each other and haven’t been seen in a week or more.
“There’s just not enough police officers in the streets to do this as law enforcement,” Majoy told 5 News Cleveland. “The public is our greatest asset. We can’t do this without the public.”
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said the data on missing minors is often inconsistent and unreliable as Cleveland police have admitted to being slow to update reports.
Yost added that the state government has to “rely on our local partners that we don’t control.”
“I am fearful of all kinds of things that fall through the cracks that include missing children,” the attorney general said. “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.”
According to The Daily Mail, Ohio had more than double the number of missing children as states with similar demographics, such as Michigan and North Carolina, last year. In 2022, 425 children went missing in Michigan, 470 minors went missing in North Carolina, and 1,455 children went missing in Ohio.
“We have so many missing children, we want to prevent this from happening, so we need to buckle down,” said mother of four Breana Brown, who started an organization to boost support and awareness for missing children. “This is not a matter we should take lightly, not at all.”
A society that is morally unraveling, does not properly respect traditional marriage or family, believes its children belong to the government rather than parents, and kills literally millions of children in the womb each year – by definition leaves its children vulnerable and defenseless in the face of a harsh predatory world. The consequences of societal breakdown (for hedonistic personal “freedoms”) are not insignificant.
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