Be Informed:Unknown/Young Adult Cases

If your child is missing or you are worried your child may go missing, please refer to How can we help you? for information on indicators of risk, prevention, and immediate steps.

Every year police receive a significant number of missing person reports involving youth and young adults (i.e., early teens to age 25) where there is no explanation for their disappearance. The category of unknown refers to situations where a child or young adult cannot be located and there is insufficient information to place the case into the other missing categories.

Situations that fall into the unknown category may include (but are not limited to):

• The child/young adult may have lost track of time or forgot to call home
• They may have been in an accident
• Environmental factors may affect their ability to return home and contact family (e.g., a snowstorm)
• A medical or other concern may affect their ability/willingness to return home and contact family

While speculation is common in these types of cases, in many situations, the facts surrounding the disappearance combined with the known personality of the child do not point to any one reason for the child or young adult to have gone missing.

For additional information on unknown and young adult cases, please refer to our Unknown/Young Adult section.