Police Find Missing Girl At Bus Depot

A Texas girl found three days after she disappeared during preparations for a family wedding said she was scared to return after realizing she had made a mistake by running away.

“As a teenager, you have a lot of emotions,” 16-year-old Lessa North said. “Once you realize you’ve made a mistake, you’re scared to go back. I was scared to return.” North was found Monday afternoon at a downtown bus station buying tickets to leave town. She had been missing since Friday, the eve of her mother’s planned wedding in Lynnwood, north of here.

A ticket seller at the Greyhound bus station recognized the girl from media reports as she was trying to buy tickets with another teenage girl, and called police, Seattle police spokesman Sean O’Donnell said.

There was no immediate indication where the girl was headed.

“We recognized she was a runaway,” O’Donnell said. She did not identify herself at first, he said, but later was persuaded to give her name.

“There was no indication she was being held against her will,” he said, adding she appeared to be in good physical condition. Police turned her over to Snohomish County authorities, who interviewed her and returned her to her parents.

Searchers had feared the worst after the girl vanished Friday evening. She left a 9-year-old relative’s birthday party, being held in the cabana at an apartment complex near Lynnwood, to get a bread knife from her mother’s nearby apartment, then disappeared.

A man in the complex reported hearing two screams at about that time, but didn’t look outside and could tell investigators nothing else, sheriff’s officials said.