When a Black teen girl goes missing, her family does not stop worrying because the story failed to make the evening news. Her mother still checks her phone. Her father still wonders where she is sleeping. Her grandparents still pray. Her friends still search TikTok for some indication that she is safe. Yet far too often, the rest of the world keeps moving.
That is why I started sharing the faces of Black teen girls reported missing across New York. I posted their photographs and names through Yonkers Voice, Mount Vernon Newswire, and my social media platforms. Thousands of people responded, commented, and shared. Then something happened that reminded me why this work matters. The mother of Jayleen Lashley, a 15-year-old from North Babylon who had been reported missing, contacted me personally. Her daughter had been found.
She asked me to let people know Jayleen was safe and to cover her daughter’s face. I did. Jayleen was no longer a missing child whose photograph needed to circulate. She was a teenager who deserved to return to her life and her privacy. Her family received the news that every family of a missing child is waiting to hear.
But what about the others, though? Naisia Simmons of Mount Vernon, London Johnson-Barrett of Far Rockaway and Journey Spann of the Bronx were among the Black girls whose names I shared. These are not simply names underneath photographs on missing-person posters. These are our girls. They are somebody’s daughters, sisters, nieces, cousins, classmates and friends.
The numbers should concern every one of us. According to the New York State Missing Persons Clearinghouse, 12,114 children were reported missing statewide in 2024. Nearly 60 percent were girls, and 55.8 percent were non-white. Black girls between the ages of 13 and 15 alone represented 17.9 percent of all missing-child reports that year.
In 2025, another 10,629 children under 18 were reported missing to police in New York. State data shows that 94 percent of those reports involved children classified as runaways. We cannot allow the word “runaway” to become an excuse to stop caring. A child away from home can still be vulnerable to exploitation, violence, abuse and countless other dangers.
There is power in our community paying attention. There is power in sharing a photograph, remembering a name and refusing to scroll past another missing Black child as though she belongs to somebody else.
Jayleen’s mother got the message she desperately needed: her daughter had been found. Now imagine every Black family still waiting for that call. Until they receive it, we should keep saying their names, sharing their faces and asking the question that matters most: Where are our girls?
Take care,
Dennis Richmond, Jr., M.S.Ed.
Author, He Spoke At My School
