MEMPHIS, Tenn. — “I was so happy when I found her. I asked them I said ‘Are you sure it is her?’ They said ‘It is her.'”
Linda Murray is breathing a sigh of relief after learning her 13-year-old daughter Jamiria is now safe.
“It’s hard not knowing where your 13-year-old child is. How she is doing, if she is eating. It’s hard,” she said.
Monday night, after being missing for almost a month, the young teen was spotted at Bellevue and South Parkway walking the streets.
“They even asked her if she was lost. Some young men asked her if she was lost. She told them no, she knew where she was.”
Her mom told WREG she fears she had been lured into prostitution.
“It’s not a good area. Not a good area. There is a lot of prostitution there, drugs there. It’s a heavy bad area. I am glad I got her, and she is back at home,” said Murray.
Police were called and questioned the 13-year-old before releasing her to her mom.
Murray said her daughter had only a tote bag with chips, juice and $3. She refused to say where she had been, who she was with or how she was living.
“She won’t talk. She won’t talk. She just says she is ok. That’s it.”
Business owners in the area noticed the girl walking the streets for hours Monday, but had no idea she was a missing teenager.
“When I saw her she was just walking. Like I said she stood over there across the street for a minute, just standing out there. Then she would walk off and come back through,” said a man who works in the area.
This was the third time Jamiria has run away. Each time she was picked up from school by a man in a black Mercedes.
West Memphis Police have been on the lookout for Jamiria and the man. They have found her each time in Memphis, but have not found him.
“She won’t tell who he is. If I could just find out who he is, I might could stop it. Somebody knows who he is. Somebody has seen her with this man,” said Murray.
Jamiria is now getting treatment. She has been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia.
There is still no word on the 30-something-year-old man with whom she was last seen.
