A promising lead turned cold Tuesday as cops turned to Facebook for new clues in a 15-year-old girl’s disappearance.
The girl, Leah Jackson (pictured), has been missing since July 28.
She was last seen around 11 p.m. looking in on her sister’s new baby in her family’s home in the Annex neighborhood.
Shari and Kenneth Muhammad, Leah’s mother and stepfather, didn’t discover Leah’s disappearance until late the following morning. They had arisen around 3 a.m. to eat a pre-sunrise meal before the onset of their daily Ramadan fast, but didn’t realize Leah was gone until more than eight hours later.
They discovered the top of a basement window had been opened overnight. Leah had apparently dropped a garment in the bushes as she left, they said. She had also cleaned her room “spotless.”
The Muhammads believe she may have arranged to meet an older man known as “Johnny” with whom she had conversed on Facebook. But they don’t know. They haven’t heard from her since — and are deeply worried.
Leah has gone missing in the past. Once she got lost on the Farmington Canal Trail and Hamden police had to track her down, according to her parents. Other times she had left school, they said, because she struggles with a learning disability. In those previous instances, though, the parents had always heard from Leah within a day, they said. Not this time.
So they have plastered the city with posters, tracked down leads at the Milford mall, drawn on support from the local Muslim community.
Leah is asthmatic and left without her inhaler, the parents said. She is 5 feet tall, 105 pounds, with light brown skin and pink highlights in her hair. She was last seen wearing a multi-colored tank-top and dark blue “skinny jeans.” She often goes by “Leah Carmela,” her mom said.
Police have been following multiple leads, said Assistant Chief Archie Generoso.
“We’re doing everything we can,” Generoso said Tuesday.
Dead Ends At The Mall
One of those leads took police Tuesday to Milford’s Connecticut Post Mall.
The Muhammads had raced to the mall on Saturday. A woman who had seen the Leah flyers called the parents to say she believed she saw Leah with another girl at the bus stop outside the mall; she said she tried to stop the girl from boarding a Bridgeport-bound bus, to no avail.
The Muhammads showed up as fast as they could and followed what they thought was the bus. They caught up with the bus. Turned out Leah wasn’t on it.
They returned to the mall on Sunday to review security tapes. They spent hours. “We didn’t see her at all,” said Kenneth Muhammad, a self-employed carpenter.
They left for home around 4:30 p.m. — when they received a call from an employee of Dick’s Sporting Goods at the mall. Mall security had posted the Leah flyer throughout the cafeteria. The employee saw the poster there and believed he had seen a girl matching the description inside the store the previous week.
The Muhammads returned to the mall Monday to visit Dick’s. A second employee there reported having seen Leah, too, seeking to buy pepper spray. When she tried to check out, a cashier asked her age. Customers have to be at least 18 to buy pepper spray; Leah said she was 15. One employee reported seeing Leah accompanied by two females; the other reported seeing a bald man in his 30s with the group, too.
By this time, the New Haven police were actively working the case. The Muhammads reported frustration the first two weeks Lisa was missing; they met for 15 minutes with a detective, then heard nothing back, they claimed. They called Police Chief Dean Esserman this past weekend. He spoke with them at length. And two detectives were dispatched to the mall. (The first lead detective on the case is going out on maternity leave, so a new detective, Rosealee Reed, took over.)
The detectives Monday asked Dick’s to make copies of security tapes for the time Leah was possibly spotted there. On Tuesday the detectives returned. Kenneth Muhammad showed up, too, to review the tapes.
And was disappointed. According to Shari Muhammad, the girl in question turned out to be taller and heavier than Leah.
One trail cold. Another still open.
Social Media Trail
That trail is Facebook.
Leah was active on Facebook. Shari Muhammad said she had recently discovered that Leah posted a promiscuous “pin-up”-style photo on her page. Leah apologized and took it down, Shari said.
Since Leah’s departure, the parents have learned, from Leah’s sister, that Leah had been communicating regularly with the older man known as “Johnny” over Facebook. Leah showed the sister photos of the man, they said.
After Leah disappeared, they found handwritten love notes in her room addressed to the man, they said. One apparently said Leah “can’t wait until next month.”
Shari Muhammad said she also learned from her ex-husband, who’s Leah’s father, that Leah had been corresponding with other older men “from as far away as Florida” on the Facebook page. The ex-husband had friended Leah on the site, she said.
After Leah left, her Facebook account was shut off.
On Tuesday, Assistant Chief Generoso said detectives were in the process of asking Facebook for access to the account to come up with new leads.
Her parents described Leah as potentially “gullible,” “easily lured away.”
“My child could be anywhere,” Shari said. So anywhere, or everywhere, is where they’ll keep looking. Anyone with information can contact her at 203 – 435-8486 and can contact the police at 203 – 946-6304.
This is terrible. I was looking through FB's privacy policy and they got CYA mumbo jumbo about not being able to give parents access to children's FB info because of federal law. Its really wrong that FB doesn't have some policy about helping parents with missing children under the age of 18.