FBI begins searching for teen sisters missing since June
The federal agency has joined the search for 15- and 14-year-old siblings Tamara and Iris Perez, who disappeared on June 28 from their home about 180 miles northwest of Detroit.
The FBI has joined the search for a pair of teen sisters who disappeared from their Michigan home in June.
Police in Roscommon County said Tamara Perez, 15, and her sister, Iris Perez, 14 – who has a star tattoo on her neck’s left side – were last seen on June 28 near their home in Prudenville, roughly 180 miles northwest of Detroit, according to MLive. Authorities there believe someone took the girls, though Prudenville Undersheriff Benjamin Lowe said it’s unclear whose company they are in.
The FBI said the sisters and their adoptive parents relocated from Florida to Michigan sometime in March after their biological parents’ rights were terminated.
“It’s unknown right now whether the biological family are suspects in the case,” said Lowe, MLive reported. “We are currently working with Florida to try to determine if the biological family is involved in this or if it’s somebody else. We don’t have the answer to those questions yet.”
According to CNN, officials said the sisters have connections to Winchester, Tennessee, as well as Florida communities in Port St. Lucie and Lake Worth.
Lowe said deputies have spoken with several of the girls’ friends, but none have had any direct contact with them since they vanished, MLive reported.
A day after the teens’ disappearance, the sheriff’s office released pictures of a white Jeep Cherokee that was leaving the area where the sisters had last been seen. Lowe said officials couldn’t be sure that the Jeep was the vehicle the girls left in, “but we suspect that it is,” MLive reported.
According to CNN, FBI statistics from 2021 show that while only 14 percent of Americans are Black, Black people account for 31 percent of missing person reports. In contrast, 76 percent of U.S. citizens and 54 percent of people in missing person reports are white.
Black families claim it can be difficult to convince authorities to take their reports of missing persons seriously. However, they contend situations involving missing white women and children are frequently handled urgently and brought to public attention.
In March, California state Sen. Steven Bradford introduced a measure aimed at raising awareness of the disappearances of Black women and children, whose cases are disproportionately underreported, theGrio previously reported.
The “Ebony Alert” system, proposed in the Democratic legislator’s Senate Bill 673, would circulate important information regarding missing Black women or young people between ages 12 and 25.
Bradford said then that the alert system “would ensure that resources and attention are given so we can bring home missing Black women and Black children in the same way we would search for any missing child and missing person.”
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