Parents have heard from missing teen

Published 12:00 am Saturday, December 4, 2010

VIDALIA — Area police are on day six of searching for the 13-year-old teen who ran away from her grandmother’s house Sunday.

Juvenile Investigator for the Vidalia Police Department Renda Singleton said the teen, Eriontae Smith, has now been entered into the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

“We still don’t know where she is,” she said. “We have gotten quite a few calls about her, and her parents are still out looking for her.”

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Singleton said the Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Ferriday Police Department have also gotten involved in the search with the Natchez Police Department and the VPD.

Smith’s father, Barry Williams, said he knows his daughter is around this area.

“She called me last night, and she will text every now and then and say she is alright,” he said. “Her sister has been texting her and telling her to come back, we are just trying to talk her into coming home.”

Williams said Smith is trying to avoid going back home with him to Houston.

“She wants to do what she wants to do,” Williams said. “It is just a different environment where I live, and she is used to something completely different.”

Williams said he suspects Smith is hiding at someone’s home in the Miss-Lou.

“I don’t know if someone is hiding her, of if it is one of her friends,” he said. “Whoever is hiding her has to know they are going to face serious trouble.”

Smith’s mother Sonji McKinney said she just wants her daughter back.

“We have been searching for her since Sunday,” she said. “That is the only thing we can do about it now.”

McKinney said she believes an adult is helping to hide Smith.

“It has to be an adult doing this, it can’t be a child,” she said. “We know she is in a house around here, we just don’t know which house it is.”

According to reports from both departments, Smith was in town visiting family for the holidays when she got into an argument with her mother Sunday morning.

Smith told McKinney she did not want to go back to her dad’s house in Texas.

When Smith’s stepmother arrived at the residence to pick her up, Smith reportedly jumped out of the bathroom window and ran away.

Smith was last seen leaving the Maple Street house at approximately 9:30 a.m. Sunday.

According to VPD reports, this is the second time the teen has run away.

Smith’s father brought Smith to Natchez from Texas to visit her mother for Thanksgiving and was going to pick her up Sunday to take her back.

Smith is a black female approximately 5 feet tall and approximately 110 pounds.

She was last seen wearing a gray shirt, gray jacket, red High School Musical sleeping pants and a blue bandana.

Anyone with any information regarding the whereabouts of Smith can contact the NPD at 601-445-7511 or the VPD at 318-336-5254.