A 14-year-old Myanmar girl whose migrant-worker father had on Sunday reported her missing and feared she might have been lured away by an individual with ill intent, – was found safe and sound yesterday at her friend’s house in Kanchanaburi’s Sangkhla Buri district.
Thai police had earlier discovered from phone records that the girl was at a friend’s house in the Three Pagodas Pass area and this was confirmed by officers then triangulating her mobile phone signal, said Kanchanaburi police chief Pol Maj General Suwit Chaosrithong.
The girl had already refused to talk with her own parents on the phone, prompting police to conclude that this was not an abduction but a case of a teen running away over an argument with them, he said.
Suwit said that a construction-worker friend of the girl’s father had also been questioned by police on suspicion that he was the driver of a pickup truck that had taken her from her home.
Police later picked up the girl from her friend’s home and found her to be well, with no sign of her having been assaulted in any way.
The unnamed girl had been at home with her younger siblings while the parents were at work at a construction site and had last been seen on Saturday morning.
She was talking with a person inside a pickup truck that was apparently waiting for her in her Muang Kanchanaburi area, before getting in the vehicle which sped off, according to CCTV footage in the area.
The girl’s mother said her daughter might have lied to the driver and told him she had been beaten up at home. She said she later called her daughter’s mobile phone on Saturday afternoon, but she did not pick up.
The girl instead sent an audio message, saying that she had been collected by a man to stay in a big, locked house at an unknown location, and that she was afraid.
When the mother texted back to ask her to pick up the phone, the girl replied that she was not allowed to take any calls.
Alarmed by those messages, the parents went to Muang Kanchanaburi police and reported the girl missing the next day.
They also played the girl’s audio messages, as evidence of her pleasg for help, as they believed she had been abducted by someone acting with ill intent.
This led to a police investigation and the discovery of CCTV footage that showing the girl getting into the truck, which her parents claimed to be similar to one belonging to a construction-worker friend of her father.
No explanation was provided as to how she had managed to escape from a house that she claimed was locked and been able to flee to Sangkhla Buri.
