Two missing Anoka County 13-year-olds are safe and an adult male is in custody following a frantic search Monday and Tuesday.
Anoka County Sheriff’s spokesman Commander Paul Sommer tweeted the news just before 11:30 a.m. Tuesday that the two girls, who are neighbors in Andover, were found in at a home on the 2400 block of Hayes Court in Burnsville, and that an adult male is now in custody.
The girls were last seen around 7:45 p.m. Monday in the area of 159th Ave and Swallow Street in Andover. Sommer tells KARE 11 that the girls were picked up by a 23-year-old man they had been chatting with on social media. He says that the communications had grown sexual in nature, and shared that the two teens had been chatting with multiple men. Sommer referred to the content of the chats and the situation that unfolded as “every parent’s worst nightmare.”
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It does appear, however, that this is the first time the girls had met someone in person. The suspect is currently being held in the Anoka County Jail. That 23-year-old man is currently a coach for a number of organizations, including East Ridge High School baseball, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School volleyball and Burnsville Traveling Fastpitch, an organization that immediately suspended him.
Concerns about the girls’ disappearance Monday grew significantly after investigators went through computers and devices that the girls use and found social media activity with unknown adult males. As many as a dozen investigators began urgently working the case.
Police say the girls had been chatting with their abductor through social media prior to their disappearance Monday night, and it was by reading those messages that police were able to find them.
Part of the investigation going forward is for authorities to determine if the man had other inappropriate contact with minors.
Anyone who knows anything about this case or any other adults who may have been in contact with these girls is asked to call the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office at (763) 427-1212.
