Over 1,000 children have gone missing in Ohio so far in 2023. Officials characterized this tragedy as an “extraordinary surge” in minors missing.
Most of the 1,072 children reported missing in Ohio have safely returned home, but authorities, parents, and community leaders have legitimate concerns about the rise in reports, as the Daily Wire reported.
In September 2023, over 45 kids were reported missing in the Cleveland-Akon area, marking a surplus of 10 compared to the 35 children reported missing just a month prior, News 5 Cleveland reported.
The president of Cleveland Missing, an organization dedicated to returning missing kids back to their homes safely, Chief John Majoy, recently warned about the rise in missing kids, saying that he worries some of those missing may have been victimized by human traffickers or gangs.
“There’s just not enough police officers in the streets to do this as law enforcement,” Majoy told News 5 Cleveland. “The public is our greatest asset. We can’t do this without the public.”
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said that sometimes the data on missing children could be inaccurate and unreliable, considering that state police have admitted that reports are slow to update. The attorney general said that the state government has “to rely on our local partners that we don’t control” for the reports on missing children.
“I am fearful of all kinds of things that fall through the cracks that include missing children,” Yost 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.”
In 2022, Ohio reported double the number of missing kids compared to other states with similar populations, such as Michigan and North Carolina, according to the Daily Mail. That same year, 425 children were reported missing in Michigan, and 450 minors disappeared in North Carolina, while 1,455 children were reported missing in Ohio.
BREAKING: More than 1,000 kids reported missing in Ohio this year in ‘extraordinary surge’.
The last available information on the total number of missing children was given in June at 1,072. This was 20% up from the same time last year.
The disappearances are creating a… pic.twitter.com/gWsdQWPWd2
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) September 26, 2023
“We have so many missing children, we want to prevent this from happening, so we need to buckle down,” mother of four Breana Brown said. “This is not a matter we should take lightly, not at all.”
