A 13-year-old girl who had gone missing in South Carolina has been found and was reunited safely with her parents on Jan. 24.
Diana Clawson was reported missing on Jan. 23. Family members believe she did not run away. She was found hiding in her home on Jan. 24.
Clawson was last seen at her bus stop in Rock Hill in the morning on Jan. 23. She never got on the bus or made it to her school, Saluda Trail Middle School.
Tonya Clawson said that she last saw her daughter at 5:30 a.m. that day. She called the police after arriving home after work and finding her son there but not her daughter. Clawson’s son told her that Diana had been at the bus stop with him in the morning but said that she needed to grab something from their apartment.
She didn’t return and missed the bus.
Tonya Clawson said the school apparently didn’t notice the girl missing as she never received a phone call stating that she was not in class on Jan. 23.
The mother said that she noticed that the key that her daughter uses to lock and unlock her bedroom was gone. She also noticed that her daughter’s room looked like it had been gone through.
The Rock Hill Schools said in a statement early Jan. 24, “Despite what some may be posting or sharing as ‘official’ information, the student is still missing.”
The school district added, “Detectives and School Resource Officers are assisting in locating her. Please be mindful that sharing inaccurate information can be very damaging in cases such as this when a child is missing.”
“We have Detectives and SRO’s working with the Family and @RockHillSchools in attempting to locate Diana. Please call in if you have any information on her,” added the Rock Hills Police Department.
At 1.30 p.m. on Jan. 24, the school district informed the public that Clawson has been found and reunited safely with her parents.
Missing Children
There were 464,324 missing children reported in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center in 2017, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.Under federal law, when a child is reported missing to law enforcement, they must be entered into the database. In 2016, there were 465,676 entries.
“This number represents reports of missing children. That means if a child runs away multiple times in a year, each instance would be entered into NCIC separately and counted in the yearly total. Likewise, if an entry is withdrawn and amended or updated, that would also be reflected in the total,” the center noted.
In 2017, the center said it assisted officers and families with the cases of more than 27,000 missing children. In those cases, 91 percent were endangered runaways, and 5 percent were family abductions.
About one in seven children reported missing to the center in 2017 were likely victims of child sex trafficking.
Missing children typically fall into five categories: kidnapped by a family member, abducted by a nonfamily perpetrator, runaways, those who got lost, stranded, or injured, or those who went missing due to benign reasons, such as misunderstandings, according to the report researchers.
