Kristen Shelton Missing More Than 4 Months is Found
For more than four months, Kanawha County sheriff's deputies have been searching for a missing 20-year-old Dunbar woman.
The trail eventually ran cold, until recently. The search ended with an unexpected twist.
Kristen Allecia Shelton, 20, was last seen earlier this year, sometime during the week of July 4.
"Her mother had not heard from her for several months," said Cpl. Sean Snuffer, with the Kanawha County Sheriff's Department.
The mother told investigators it wasn't unusual not to hear from her daughter for a month, but she began to worry. A missing person's alert went out in October.
A week ago, 13News began looking at the case again. On Friday, the mother said her daughter was located, but didn't want to talk about it.
The kicker is -- they didn't tell investigators in the case, either. The deputies found out when the reporter contacted them.
"We went to the house, interviewed the mother. The mother didn't know the exact location. And, of course, unless we see the missing person face to face and are able to identify him, we don't take them out of NCIC," Snuffer said.
Investigators eventually found Kristen Shelton at her father's house in Charleston.
"She didn't seem like she wanted to talk," said Snuffer. "The family was not very forthcoming with information, like I said. I don't know how long she's been located. I don't know where she's been staying."
The Sheriff's department receives a missing persons call about every week. Most of the time, the missing person is located within days. And it's rare for a case that's more than four months old to end this way.
"It is frustrating on these type of cases, especially one that's dragged out since July. We've put a lot of man hours into this," Snuffer said. "In this instance, after five months of not knowing where a person is, you usually assume the worst. You usually assume they've been abducted, they're deceased, something's bad happened to them. So, then you shift your focus from a missing person to sort of like a homicide case. And this particular case, that's what we had already started doing," he added.
Fortunately, this missing person's case turned out well. Unfortunately, a lot of resources and time poured into this case could have been used to help in other missing persons cases.
The trail eventually ran cold, until recently. The search ended with an unexpected twist.
Kristen Allecia Shelton, 20, was last seen earlier this year, sometime during the week of July 4.
"Her mother had not heard from her for several months," said Cpl. Sean Snuffer, with the Kanawha County Sheriff's Department.
The mother told investigators it wasn't unusual not to hear from her daughter for a month, but she began to worry. A missing person's alert went out in October.
A week ago, 13News began looking at the case again. On Friday, the mother said her daughter was located, but didn't want to talk about it.
The kicker is -- they didn't tell investigators in the case, either. The deputies found out when the reporter contacted them.
"We went to the house, interviewed the mother. The mother didn't know the exact location. And, of course, unless we see the missing person face to face and are able to identify him, we don't take them out of NCIC," Snuffer said.
Investigators eventually found Kristen Shelton at her father's house in Charleston.
"She didn't seem like she wanted to talk," said Snuffer. "The family was not very forthcoming with information, like I said. I don't know how long she's been located. I don't know where she's been staying."
The Sheriff's department receives a missing persons call about every week. Most of the time, the missing person is located within days. And it's rare for a case that's more than four months old to end this way.
"It is frustrating on these type of cases, especially one that's dragged out since July. We've put a lot of man hours into this," Snuffer said. "In this instance, after five months of not knowing where a person is, you usually assume the worst. You usually assume they've been abducted, they're deceased, something's bad happened to them. So, then you shift your focus from a missing person to sort of like a homicide case. And this particular case, that's what we had already started doing," he added.
Fortunately, this missing person's case turned out well. Unfortunately, a lot of resources and time poured into this case could have been used to help in other missing persons cases.
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