Girl, 16, Disappears; People Heard Scream

The Snohomish County sheriff’s office was looking for a 16-year-old girl who disappeared from an apartment complex.

Lessa A. North was attending a birthday party for a 9-year-old relative in the Canyon Springs apartment complex in Lynnwood on Friday.

She left the party to go to her mother’s apartment in the same complex to pick up a bread knife at about 7 p.m., sheriff’s spokeswoman Jan Jorgensen said.

About that time, residents of the complex reported hearing a scream, Jorgensen said. Lessa hasn’t been seen since.

The girl lives in Houston with her father and stepmother. She was visiting her mother, who planned to be married on Saturday.

Her family said she has no history of running away. She is an A-student and was looking forward to her mother’s wedding, Jorgensen said.

The wedding has been postponed.

The sheriff’s department has used helicopters and tracking dogs to search the area, and divers checked a couple of nearby ponds but found nothing, Jorgensen said.

Family members have covered the county with fliers showing photographs of Lessa and a description, said her aunt, Deborah North.