Teenage runaway finally found safe and well
(CNS) UPDATED WEDNESDAY: Police have now found 15-year-old Shania Beckford, who had been missing for over a week, safe and well. The RCIPS and the Coast Guard had carried out extensive aerial, sea and land searches over the last two days after she had evaded police when they caught up with her and two teenage friends on Monday night on Seven Mile Beach after all three had been reported missing from last Tuesday.
Police did not say where Shania had been found or if anyone had been harbouring the teenager, but that she had been located, apparently in good health and returned home safely. the police also thanked the public for their assistance over the last week and supporting their efforts to find her and reporting sightings.
Earlier posts: Shania was missing for over a week. She evaded police on Monday night when she and the two girls she had been with were found on Seven Mile Public Beach near the Calico Jack’s site at about 10:40pm. While Jahsmine Ebanks (15) and Jemma Watson (16) were taken into safe custody, Shania ran away, heading south along the beach, and officers lost sight of her.
A police spokesperson said in a press release that it was out of an abundance of caution that searches were conducted along the shoreline and in the water with the assistance of the Air Operations Unit and the Cayman Islands Coast Guard. As of 10am Tuesday, Shania was still missing, and searches continue in the area in an effort to locate her and ensure her well-being.
All three girls were reported missing after they failed to appear for their pick-up after school last Tuesday afternoon and did not return to the home they are currently staying at in West Bay. On Thursday, police appealed to the girls, who have been reported missing on previous occasions, to return home and on Monday issued a warning that it is an offence to “harbour or conceal” young people.
Shania was last seen wearing black tights and a grey t-shirt. She is described as being about 4’9″ tall, of medium build and brown complexion, with curly brown hair.
Officers strongly encourage Shania to attend the nearest police station or make contact to establish that she is safe and well. Anyone with information is asked to call the West Bay Police Station at 949-3999. Anonymous tips can be provided to the RCIPS Confidential Tip Line at 949-7777, or via the website.
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Category: Local News
When is there going to be a frank and objective national discussion on the matter of adults preying on the under-aged? It is not a new problem, but we are a new generation. Please!! Let us do something. Our children and teenagers deserve to grow up free of sexual violence — even if they do not realize that’s what’s happening to them.
Wanted by police for the crime of not wanting to go home.
WHT
Is it only me? She jumped in the water and disappeared? So a 16 year old girl out ran and out swam the RCIPS? Sounds like somebody couldn’t swim!
SMH
Some of the police can’t swim it would seem.
No but like some esteemed politicos, they can sure float.
kids wasting time and resources.
What a huge waste of police resources !
Misallocation of concern and misdirected blame. They should be looking intensely into why 2 of these girls keep ghosting from home, and now a third. It’s a pattern. They should be getting these teens the support they need, find out what is missing, not maligning them in media and giving them arrest records. That’s the opposite of help, and it doesn’t change what’s repelling them from their own beds.
These girls have appeared in similar media reports before; this is not their “first rodeo”. Clearly they are willing participants in these recurring events (problem).
Most likely they are harboured by older men, they DONT want to return to their “protective” residences and they clearly DONT want to return to their homes where whatever damage they have experienced likely started.
Seems like a deeper-rooted problem to me. But who am I, just Joe Citizen observing the repeated occurrences of young girls going “missing”, only to be found in male adults company.
God forbid we ever encounter genuine kidnapping situations (or worse), the authorities would be so passe, because of ALL these “wolf” reports of “missing” girls.
Of course, we could bring it to a speedy halt by charging the men that they are found in the company of with harbouring (or no doubt worse). But hey, who in the Cayman authorities is going to charge a man for taking advantage of an underage girl. Hell, we just give them status once they have fathered kids with them.
Because Caymanians never have sex with minors right?! Deluded.
It’s pretty gross that our public malign these kids as sex-starved booty seekers, when it’s clear they don’t want back to whatever home looks like. What kid doesn’t want to sleep in their own bed? There’s a different problem here, where the police are flying air support to seek their apprehension, to deliver them back to a toxic environment that they are actively trying to escape from. Serial abusers shouldn’t have access to these resources without a deep audit of own their humane and loving deliverables. Where is that report?
Though I understand the points made in the latter part of your comment, initially referring to these girls as “willing participants” is victim blaming and contributing to the deeper rooted problem that you are highlighting.
this is such a sad inditement of where priorities lie here. how can 3 girls of 16 and under not be in danger of exploitation and abuse after a week missing from home. In most places this would be seen as an emergency, these aren’t missing adults, they’re vulnerable children !!
I’m in no discrediting what you’re saying about the priority to find these girls. But you do realize these are the same set of girls constantly running away and wasting time and resources of law enforcement right? What is GOVERNMENT doing to address the issue? It’s not just a police and family services issue. The government isn’t doing anything about it!
Maybe, it should be investigated as to why it’s happening so they can get the help that they need.
Too sensible. They don’t want to go back to their own bed wherever they are normally housed. Why is “home” so unwelcoming an option, one must ask…is there a better option, or a just not quite as bad option?
everyone can have an opinion, but this is exactly how police in other jurisdictions talked about repeat missing from home children 20 years ago, until the whole issue of sexual exploitation of girls by adult offenders was recognised for the heinous crime it was.
I totally agree with you. What the government need to consider is building a proper juvenile detention centre facility. These repeated runaways yes have issues from where they’re coming from, but they take advantage of what they are now being provided and are knowingly putting their own lives at risk when they runaway. Unfortunately the good kids are mixed with problematic children in the homes, and the good kids eventually start behaving bad, and the bad ones get worse. But am sure as always, the government won’t respond until something bad happens. I just pray that it doesn’t get that far. Parents please take control of your children before it’s too late.
Incredible that everyone wants to arrest the missing minor children, and not investigate those they are fleeing from.
The lack of commentary on these young girls in the month that we are celebrating women and girls is stark. It just shows how the community doesn’t really give a damn about our young people. If it was about Cubans or Jamaicans or God forbid Ms. Universe and a crown of thorns this site would have been overwhelmed with keyboard warriors.
I pray that these young girls find their way back home and that whomever has them are caring for them in the best possible way.
The fact of the matter is these young girls have deliberately absconded on numerous occasions. This is why apathy exists in the “keyboard warriors group” and the “prayer warriors” aks Caymanianas are sending hopes and prayers rather than conducting a careful examination of why these young girls are in state care in the first place.
Too many children having children, I am sure if a proper census is taken, one will realise that far too many Caymanian girls get pregnant at 15+ to 18, and it is of no moment … thus continuing a cycle of Caymanian under-education and under-employment, which the entire ex-pat population funds through the numerous and varied types of fees including the 22% duty paid on an annual basis, which provides the budget for NICE, NAU, various stipends being paid, house repair though R3 Cayman, WORC daycare classes, etc …
But nobody wants to talk about that … the uncomfortable truths of living in Cayman.
Somewhat facts of your comments, not all 100% correct, but some truths in there.
My question to you is, why do you live in Cayman?
I mean, save 22% yearly by living elsewhere is what I would suggest to your accountant. Bon voyage.
Cayman has positive and negative points. The positive points are due to expats, the negative points are due to Caymanians… Ha ha! Only joking…
Seriously though, any country has strengths and weaknesses, as does any population. Cayman has the advantage of being able to select workers from the world. Only those with positive attributes who can contribute to the country are allowed. Therefore, e.g. sexually incontinent teenagers with no societal value don’t get work permits to move here.
By definition, all of the c40,000 expats here were deemed by Caymanians in WORC to have something that Caymanians themselves do not. That is not a criticism, merely a reflection of the fact that a tiny population of 30,000 like Cayman, with a relatively poor record of educational achievement, will inevitably need to recruit externally or ‘do a Bermuda’ by committing economic seppuku via protectionism, jingoism and xenophobia.
None of the above, however, means that Cayman is above criticism. It is intellectually incoherent to suggest otherwise. E.g. teenage mothers are an indicator of societal failure. They are not unique to Cayman, and those of us criticising the phenomenon do so similarly in our home jurisdictions. On a tiny island however, with immense wealth, it should be possible to deal with the issue, e.g. with contraceptive implants and bribes not to have children unless securely married and established in a career.
In summary therefore, the trope of “If you don’t like it here, go home” is lazy and incoherent. First, we’re offering valuable advice that you apparently need, and second, if we all went home you would no longer have an economy. You’d miss us then! 😉
I would also like to know where this poster plans to go to avoid funding government sponsored socialism. just another couch qualified finance minister. they run a mock here.
Like Cayman is the only place in the world that this happens. Please tell me about your wonderful country that must be heaven to be so perfect. But wait? Why are you here if your country is so wonderful?
the beach is nicer (apart from Easter)
Please see my comment above: https://caymannewsservice.com/2023/03/teenage-runaways-missing-for-almost-a-week/#comment-586844
Have you also considered another point: expats have seen the mess that de facto socialist policies in our home countries created, and we are doing our best to warn you?
Look at the disaster that is the UK. Yesterday’s budget introduced the highest taxes for decades, to subsidise the types of people who the comments above criticise. Welfare states are Ponzi schemes, based on an unsustainable orgy of intergenerational theft (tax/borrowing/money printing).
Greedy post-1948 generations and failed families bleed countries dry. All the sources of funding are however now exhausted, so the UK and other so-called ‘social democracies’ (e.g. socialism with euphemisms) are in a high-tax, no-growth, high-emigration death spiral.
That is, in part, through the well intentioned but economically illiterate policy of subsidising — and thus encouraging — generation after generation of unproductive people to reproduce, at great cost to society. Please – learn from our home countries’ mistakes!
These minor children are not wanted thieves. Sure, we might assume they probably partake in all the fun joyful and daring splendors that other teens do. The difference here is that after completing those adventures, they don’t want to go home to their stuff, their world, and their own bed. That’s the unusual and alarming red flag. Why? Do they face a whipping there? Are the sand flies make a better bed? We might ask.