6-year-old boy who disappeared after school found alive, NC police say
Update: The child was found on Jan. 7 and is in good health, the Jacksonville Police Department said in a Facebook post. He was found in the police department’s search area and is being medically evaluated.
Original story:
An Amber Alert was issued after a 6-year-old boy went missing in Eastern North Carolina, officials said.
Jacksonville officers are looking for Amari Gabriel Christiansen, who police said disappeared on Thursday, Jan. 6.
Officials said Amari was last seen at about 5:45 p.m., almost two hours after a bus dropped him off, near Grace Street in Jacksonville. The area is in the Holiday City mobile home park, roughly 15 miles from the Camp Lejeune military base and about 125 miles southeast of Raleigh.
“Officers and detectives are in the area of Holiday City MHP and Northeast Creek Park actively searching for Amari at this time,” Capt. Mike Capps, investigative services supervisor, wrote at about 9:30 p.m. on the Jacksonville Public Safety Facebook page.
The next morning, the Jacksonville Police Department said officials were treating the child’s disappearance as a “suspicious incident.”
“We’re going to treat it as a possible abduction just because we don’t know what happened,” Chief Mike Yaniero said in video of a news conference that WITN posted online.
Amari is described as Black, 80 pounds, and 4 feet tall with brown eyes and black hair.
The N.C. Department of Public Safety said Amari was wearing a “black long sleeve shirt with ‘game on’, blue sweatpants with sharks, navy blue jacket, and black sneakers. He was in possession of a power ranger backpack and lunch box with Minecraft or Paw Patrol.”
After Amari vanished, officials issued an “Amber Alert for a child abduction” but didn’t list other details about a possible abduction or name a suspect. State officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for additional information on Jan. 7.
Jacksonville residents are urged to check their properties for signs of Amari, and anyone with details about the case is asked to call 911 or the Jacksonville Police Department at 910-938-7585.
This story was originally published January 7, 2022 at 7:56 AM with the headline "6-year-old boy who disappeared after school found alive, NC police say."
