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AUTHORITIES were shocked to find a teenage girl who had been missing for weeks in an adult jail under someone else’s name.
The girl, 13, first went missing on August 2 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and law enforcement continued searching for her up until Tuesday.
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She was allegedly found on August 17 and booked into the Beaver County Jail, however, authorities thought she was someone else.
Police said she gave them a fake name when they found her stealing from a local Dollar General with an unnamed 25-year-old woman.
Police even released new photos of her on September 1 as search efforts continued – they had no idea that she had already been in jail for weeks.
While in jail, she learned about a woman named Dominique Arnold and called her to ask for help.
Read more on missing people
“She said, ‘My name is Mae Wilson. Could I use your address so I could come home from jail?'” Arnold told local CBS affiliate, KDKA News.
Arnold then got a call from another inmate she was friends with who told her the missing girl was in jail.
After receiving the second call, Arnold notified police that the missing girl was booked into the Beaver County Jail.
“From my point of view, if I wouldn’t have called and said, ‘Hey, I found her,’ she would’ve still been [in jail],” said Arnold.
Beaver County District Attorney Nate Bible told reporters on Tuesday that the girl told authorities she was 18 and gave a false name during her arrest.
She reportedly told officers that she was not an adult while in jail, but refused to give her parent’s identities, claiming that she was homeless.
Authorities couldn’t determine her identity from her fingerprints and even contacted Beaver County Children Youth Services, but ended up with nothing, according to Bible.
“I guess the moral here is don’t lie to the police,” Bible told KDKA.
“For whatever reason, this is someone who didn’t want to go home and preferred jail.”
It wasn’t until after Arnold called in that authorities finally made the shocking discovery.
Timeline of the girl’s disappearance
A 13-year-old girl’s dissapearnace came to a shocking end when she was found in an adult jail. Take a look at a timeline for her disappearnce below,
- August 2 – The last time she was seen before going missing
- August 17 – The girl was arrested for shoplifting and lied about her identity and age
- September 1 – Police released new photos of the girl to find her – not knowing she was booked in jail
- September 3 – Authorities were notified that she was in jail and they released her to her parents
Law enforcement canceled the missing person alert for the girl and she was released from the adult jail earlier this week.
It’s unclear why she lied about her name and age during her arrest.
The teenager was taken out of the jail system and her parents picked her up.
She has been charged with shoplifting which will now be handled in juvenile court.
The U.S. Sun has reached out to Pittsburgh Police and the Beaver County Sheriff’s Office for more information.
To read more about missing people, check out this story on a missing Marine who was found on base in California earlier this week.
The Marine, Bailey Cameron, disappeared on August 25 but was seen on surveillance footage a few days later before police announced he was no longer missing.
