US Marshals find 11 runaway children as part of ‘Summer Rescue’ effort in New Orleans
A two-month effort by the U.S. Marshals Service led to the rescue of 11 child runaways in New Orleans, the agency said Wednesday in a press release obtained by McClatchy News.
The probe, dubbed “Operation Summer Rescue 2020,” ran from Aug. 1 through Sept. 30 and focused on locating suspected runaways considered “missing or endangered.” The agency’s Missing Child Unit sponsored the operation.
Among those found were a 16-year-old boy allegedly involved in illegal gang activity in New Orleans, authorities said, and a 13-year-old girl located more than 500 miles away in Nashville, Tennessee, with the help of local police.
“This is a very important mission that the USMS has been tasked by Congress to oversee, as the safety of children across the country is paramount to this nation’s future,” Scott Illing, U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Louisiana, said in a statement. “While 11 recoveries may not seem high, this work, which is time consuming, was accomplished while also running our normal day-to-day violent felony offender investigations and sex offender fugitive operations in the district, along with our other judicial missions.”
Marshal service deputies also arrested several suspects as part of the probe, the release says, including an adult male charged with aggravated statutory rape.
Since March, the USMS New Orleans Task Force has assisted in the rescues of nine other missing children, the agency said. They included a missing pregnant teen and two young brothers whose mother was arrested on a first-degree murder warrant out of Laurel, Mississippi in connection to the death of her 11-year-old son..
The U.S. Marshals Service has located more than 1,800 missing children across the U.S. since 2005.
A child sex trafficking sting in Georgia earlier this year led to the rescue of 26 missing children, McClatchy News previously reported. At the request of local law enforcement, the USMS ensured the safe location of 13 others.
A total of 8 “highly endangered” missing kids were also found during a multi-agency effort dubbed “Operation Homecoming” in Indiana last month, according to the agency.
