BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
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Warner |
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Carroll |
Jacque Carroll is on disability from her nursing job because of a heart condition, but her heart is breaking for another reason. Her 14-year-old granddaughter, Jackie Carroll, a child Ms. Carroll has raised since the girl's mother was shot to death more than a decade ago, is missing.
Ordinarily, her story might not make the news. Her granddaughter is a suspected runaway -- the same as nearly half a million teens across the country each year.
But just the day before, Jackie's friend, Brandy Warner, 13, of Madisonville, was found unharmed in Mount Airy after telling a similar story about catching the wrong bus after school. Brandy called her mother from Over-the-Rhine but never caught up with the grandfather who came to pick her up.
Her disappearance left her family searching all night, until a tip led police to her whereabouts. She was hanging out in a Mount Airy parking lot with a group of boys.
Jackie, who lives in the Columbia Township neighborhood close to Brandy, also told her grandmother a story about catching the wrong bus. Jackie attended her first day of school Tuesday as a ninth-grader at Withrow High School, but she didn't make it home until 6:20 p.m. She told her grandmother she ended up downtown and had to find her way back.
Ms. Carroll said she thought Jackie was lying. Jackie had missed her curfew before and had run away several times.
She disappeared the next day, only hours after Ms. Carroll had taken her to Hamilton County Juvenile Court to face runaway charges from a few weeks before. Jackie was given two work details and told she would get in trouble if she ran away again.
For her grandmother, the only thing worse than not having Jackie home is imagining what terrible things might have happened to her. The Hamilton County sheriff's office is investigating Jackie's disappearance. She is described as a 5-foot-6, 110-pound black girl with shoulder-length black hair with bangs. She has a slight scar on her upper lip from a dog bite. She was last wearing new school clothes -- a long-sleeve white blouse, khaki pants and black shoes with clunky heels.
Her grandmother was struck that her story was so similar to Brandy's. "I love her, but I'm not going to tolerate this behavior," said Ms. Carroll, 57. "Everybody in this world has rules; and if you can't follow the rules, there's someone who can make you follow the rules."
Sgt. Ken Fenech, a supervisor in the Cincinnati Police Division's personal crimes unit -- which handled 1,345 missing reports in the first seven months of this year -- said parents must take a tough-love approach when their children run away.
The best advice he can give parents is to make a police report and sign runaway warrants. That way, he said, the missing reports are entered into a nationwide computer system and police can pick them up on runaway charges.
Brandy, who was safe at home Friday, said she has no idea where Jackie is. But in hindsight, Brandy says being at home is better than being on the streets.
"I'm just glad I'm home now," she said. "I really didn't know where I was going, and it's kind of crazy out there."
