Text messages sent to a Virginia mother likely did not come from her daughter who has been missing for two weeks, say police.
Gabriella Todman, 15, disappeared from her home on 24 July and her family began receiving texts and social media messages purporting to be from the teenager on 3 August.
Now Norfolk Police Chief Mark Talbot says that they do not believe they came from Gabriella, who has gone missing before but always returned within a day.
“We investigated that thoroughly. We do not believe that the messages came from Gabby at this point,” Chief Talbot said.
“We have more work to do related to those messages, much more investigative work. But at this point, we’re asking for the public’s help in finding out where she might be.”
The police chief admitted the timeline of Gabriella’s disappearance left his investigators “anxious” and that the messages had “sparked a different thought” about what had happened to her.
“There’s a sense of urgency that we’re bringing to this investigation, like we bring to all investigations,” he added but did not give any details about the content of the messages.
“The reality of missing persons cases is they almost all worked out fine, but not all of them, as we’ve seen on a number of occasions. We’re going to do everything that we can to make sure that this case works out just fine.”
Gabriella is described as 5 feet, 5 inches tall and weighs 135 pounds. She has brown eyes and curly dark brown hair.
Police say she was last seen at around 1pm on 24 July on Glenn Myrtle Avenue wearing a black and green hoodie, black jeans, black socks and black slides.
