UPDATE: FOUND: City rallies for missing teen, brings her home
BY Trevor Montgomery with RCNS for Hemet Eye News
After being missing for five days and within hours of a rally organized by her aunt and legal guardian Jeanette Burrows, 14-year-old Serena Burrows has been located. Brenda Condon, the founder of Cal Advocates for The Missing was quick to share the good news on social media pages where she had shared a flier asking for people’s help locating Serena.
Serena was located by Riverside Police officers around 9 p.m., after they received a tip about Serena’s whereabouts.
“We would like everyone to know that Serena has been found tonight,” Serena’s aunt and legal guardian Jeanette Burrows said via a Facebook post. “Thank you so much, everyone. She is safe!”
Condon created Cal Advocates for The Missing when a son of one of her friends went missing in San Francisco. “Sadly, Crishtian Hughes is still missing to this day,” Condon said. Today, Condon and Cal Advocates for The Missing administrate 27 different social media pages dedicated to helping find missing persons.
“Since then we have created hundreds of page’s for missing persons, Condon explained. “We have found over 40 people in the last year and a half.”
ORIGINAL STORY.
Reports of a missing 14-year-old Wildomar girl have brought in countless volunteers to help with many expressing a willingness to join a rally and search party, planned for later this afternoon. The missing teen has been identified as Serena Burrows, by the girl’s aunt and legal guardian, Jeanette Burrows.
Reports of the young girl’s disappearance have brought in several tips and leads that investigators from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Wildomar Station are following up on.
The family has called for all available citizens to join in the rally, scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. at the Wildomar Post Office, located at 21392 Palomar Street, in Wildomar.
“We’re just going to hand out flyers and basically, just send as many groups out as possible to go door to door,” Jeanette explained. “We are going to look for any additional potential surveillance cameras that might show Serena’s movements and activities once she left her residence. We just want to get out there as much as we can.”
“I’ve actually had a great response of volunteers so far,” Jeanette said. “There have been so many people volunteering to come out and help us form search parties and get her flyers out. The community is really getting involved and it has just been an amazing response,”
“Thankfully, I have received a lot of help and guidance from Brenda Adams Condon, a representative from Cal Advocates for The Missing,” Jeanette explained. “She has helped me every step of the way. She even helped me set up the webpages for Serena.”
So far, investigators have located at least three surveillance video cameras that may have picked up images of the teen, according to Jeanette. However, the findings of those videos have not yet been publicly released.
Serena has been missing for five days and was last seen at her residence in Wildomar, May 7, at about 11 p.m. From the moment Jeanette realized Serena was missing she began an internet-based campaign, creating digital flyers, providing constant social media updates, posting pictures of Serena, answering people’s questions, and even organizing a rally, flyer hand-out and search party.
“I never dreamed I would be in this situation.”
Serena left her home Saturday night, sometime after 11 p.m., Jeanette believes. Jeanette explained she and Serena had gotten into an argument in the hours leading to her disappearance.
A sheriff investigator later reportedly told Jeanette that Serena had been live chatting in the bathroom with a 15-year-old boy from Texas.
Jeanette explained there have been a few times Serena had “taken off,” but she would always go to a friend’s house or the home of a nearby family member and she never stayed gone for long.
“Plus she always called me right away to let me know where she was,” Jeanette explained. “She has never just up and disappeared, where she was gone for more than a few hours, or maybe a day, without her letting us know where she was.”
Based on her past experiences with Serena, Jeanette assumed Serena had simply run away again and she waited for a call from the teen she calls “her daughter.” To her dismay that phone call never came.
“Maybe she just got embarrassed and upset or mad because she knew we were going to take her phone away,” Jeanette said. “She probably knew once we started looking, we were going to find out she had been talking to people much older than her, many who live in other states and that we would find other things of that nature.”
Once Jeanette began to go through Serena’s phone looking for possible clues to her whereabouts, she learned Serena was meeting other boys and what she believed to be adult men through a phone app called KIK. “She was talking to a lot of out-of-state people and many looked like grown men,” Jeanette said.
“Our biggest fear is that she might have left to meet with one of the people she has been video chatting with or that she was trying to walk to a friend’s house and something may have happened to her along the way.”
Jeanette explained that even though she has very little contact with Serena’s mother and there has been much animosity and legal battling between the two over custody of the teen, the two have come together and have been working toward their common goal of locating Serena and bringing her home as safely and as quickly as possible
“Serena has lived with me and my family as our daughter for the last two years,” according to Jeanette. Jeanette said she has had primary custody of Serena since 2014, while Serena’s mom was incarcerated on unspecified charges. Jeannette was then awarded permanent custody of Serena May 2015. Serena’s mom was released from jail just over a month ago.
Sheriff’s officials working diligently to resolve case
According to Jeanette, deputies and investigators already called most of the people Serena had been talking with online and determined most of the individuals she was chatting with were juveniles. However, it was not immediately known how many – or if any – of the people Serena had been talking to, both locally and out-of-state , were adults.
“That aspect of the investigation is ongoing,” according to Riverside Sheriff Lt. William Tyler of the Wildomar Sheriff’s Station.
Jeanette said she requested that the sheriff’s department conduct a more in-depth forensics examination on Serena’s phone to locate any hidden phone apps or deleted conversations, pictures or videos that might help lead to her location. The sheriff’s department is expected to retrieve the phone as evidence as soon as possible.
Jeanette hopes doing so might shed some new light on Serena’s disappearance.
“I am really excited to see what the sheriff’s department might be able to find on her phone, which could have much more information that could be uncovered during a more in-depth examination.”
“We’ve had several witnesses who claim they saw Serena at different locations near her home, but none of those sightings have been confirmed yet,” Jeanette said. “The investigators got three different videos from three different businesses. So they could have three potential sightings, all on film,” Jeanette said. “When I spoke with an official today he told me they were still reviewing the surveillance footage, which I was told can be very time-consuming.”
“I am just so happy to hear the department will be doing everything they possibly can to look into Serena’s disappearance,” Jeanette said. “We need as much community and law enforcement support and assistance as possible in locating Serena.”
To help aid in Serena’s search, Jeanette has hired Scott Herring, a private investigator from S.W. Herring International Private Investigations. Mr. Herring is helping with this investigation pro-bono and can be reached for tips and leads regarding Serena at (909) 883-3045.
“Anyone who wants to come out and help us spread the word about Serena or who wants to help us post fliers and conduct search parties is encouraged to join us,” Jeanette said. “At this point, we will take any and all the help we can get.”
For more information on the ongoing search efforts visit the Facebook page set up by Jeanette and a representative from Cal Advocates for The Missing.
Anyone with information about Serena or where she might be should contact the investigations bureau at the Riverside County Sheriff’s Wildomar Police Station at (951) 245-3300 or (951) 776-1099 after hours. Callers can remain anonymous.
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