A Georgia family is celebrating after their 15-year-old son who went missing in 2016 has been found. After being gone for almost two years, Aubrey Carroll‘s family feared the worst but they were in for a wonderful surprise when the Spaulding County Sheriff reached out to them.
Michael Carroll dropped off his teen son at the bus stop on May 24, 2016. When his stepmom went to pick him up at the same location that afternoon, he was not there. After attempting to contact Aubrey’s friends, they reported him missing.
Aubrey had left school with a friend that day. When he was not permitted to stay overnight, he asked for a ride to the Flying J Truck Stop. From there, he went on a journey from one place to another. Aubrey contacted a friend two days after he went missing, but then all communication ended.
Investigators believed that he would return on his own soon, but as days turned into months and then a year, they were losing hope. “Initially, we believed he ran away,” Spaulding County Sheriff Darrell Dix said. “But then we don’t know what happened.”
Find Missing Aubrey Jayce Carroll! https://t.co/SFxuabJffj pic.twitter.com/XkDsHLkcDn
— Lisa DeSherlia (@AllTheMissing) October 26, 2017
Eventually, Aubrey was put on the FBI’s missing person’s website as they presumed he had been kidnapped and was in danger. Then on April 10th, things dramatically changed. The Sheriff visited Aubrey’s family to inform them of their discovery.
“(We) showed them pictures of Aubrey and shared with them a Facebook page that he had launched under an assumed identity,” Sheriff Dix said. “We also found that over the time since Aubrey left, he had no less than five personal contacts with law enforcement agencies ranging from Alabama to Arizona under his assumed identity.”
Aubrey had been part of a group that barters and only use cash as they travel from state to state. “He told us that he left on his own, and had not been abducted, hurt, abused, exploited, or harmed in any way,” the Sheriff said.
Aubrey met with his mother under specific conditions, then he appeared with the Sheriff in a Facebook Live video. Aubrey thanked people for praying for him while he was gone. He let everyone know he was okay and encouraged people to continue smiling.
A video about Aubrey’s case is below.
It is terrific that he is home, but what a horrific ordeal he put his mother through. He left on his own and his parents were left to wonder, worry, and search.
In today’s world with sex traffickers, it’s easy to see how this could have turned out very poorly for this teen who left on an almost two-year adventure.
Share this if you are glad Aubrey is home!
Source: Western Journal