GILROY
– Police now believe the 16-year-old Gilroy High School student
who has been missing since a Friday field trip to Modesto is
remaining in the Central Valley by choice, not force.
GILROY – Police now believe the 16-year-old Gilroy High School student who has been missing since a Friday field trip to Modesto is remaining in the Central Valley by choice, not force.
“From everything we’re hearing it sounds like it is completely voluntary,” said Gilroy Police Department Corp. Kurt Svardal, whose department is working with the Modesto police to track down the girl. “There is no apparent criminal offense.”
Gilroy High junior Tamika Jones has been missing since she and two of her female classmates wandered off from a field trip in downtown Modesto Friday evening and left in a vehicle with a group of men.
The two other GHS students returned home Saturday after spending Friday night with Jones and several unidentified males at a Merced apartment. Jones, who use to live in Modesto, decided to stay with the males and has not been heard from since, according to the GPD.
But Jones’ mother, Cynthia Carter, insists that her daughter did not run away from home.
“I’m hoping and praying she’s all right,” said an emotional Carter Monday afternoon, who described her missing daughter as a shy girl who enjoyed playing basketball, reading and shopping.
“I don’t understand the whole thing,” Carter said. “Tamika has never run away or done anything like this before, and to the best of my knowledge she didn’t stay in contact with any of her friends in Modesto – we haven’t lived there since 2000 and we were only there eight months. This just isn’t like her, and I’m scared.”
Jones left her backpack with her planner and notebooks on the school bus, and no possessions are missing from her room that would indicate she had planned to run away, Carter said.
On Monday afternoon, GHS administrators and Gilroy police interviewed the two girls who said they spent Friday night with Jones and a group of men who the girls described as African Americans in their 20s, according to Gilroy police.
Those two girls returned to Gilroy Saturday without Jones after one of their parents picked them up where they were dropped off by one of the men that morning on the side of a Merced road. Both girls attended class at GHS Monday.
During the Monday interview the girls told police they last saw Jones when they were leaving the Merced apartment complex Saturday morning; Jones was in a separate vehicle from the other two girls. It was described as a white van, and Jones was accompanied in the vehicle by two males.
A GHS teacher supervising the Friday field trip filed a missing person’s report with Modesto police shortly after midnight Friday, and Modesto police have been searching the area for Jones since, Modesto police said.
On Monday afternoon, the GPD sent a picture of Jones to the Modesto police, who are planning on distributing flyers with the picture today and running an advertisement with Jones’ photo in the local newspaper, Svardal said.
“I’ve talked to (the girls), and they’re giving me different stories,” Carter said. “Now one is saying she remembers the apartment they stayed at Friday night, so I’m telling police to check out that apartment.”
Jones moved to Gilroy with her mother and siblings in September after living in Fresno for two years, and Carter said she thinks her daughter could be anywhere in the Central Valley right now.
Carter also said she is upset with GHS for letting her daughter disappear on a school-sponsored trip.
On Friday morning, Carter signed a permission slip to let Jones take part in the annual Rotary Club-sponsored, California high school lip-synch contest in Modesto that attracted more than 2,000 students from 13 schools around the state. The contest includes principals and students doing dance routines to lip-synched music, and winners are awarded college scholarships.
GHS Principal Bob Bravo, an assistant principal and at least seven teachers accompanied the approximately 80 GHS students who entered the contest Friday, according to Carter.
“Before the trip I went to the school and asked if the kids would be supervised, and they told me yes,” Carter said. “My intention is that if my daughter left with the school for a field trip she would return with the school.”
On Monday, Bravo said the contest was a “well supervised event” with parents, staff and Modesto police present, but as usual at such events, students outnumbered supervisors.
“If someone was so inclined they could find a way (to leave),” he said.
Bravo also said that he had not yet decided on any disciplinary action he will take against Jones’ two companions in ditching the field trip.
“Right now we’re concentrating our efforts on assisting the Modesto and Gilroy police,” he said.
GHS administrators will send a letter today to parents with an update on Jones’ situation and contact numbers for anyone with information about Jones, Superintendent Edwin Diaz said.
Jones is 5-feet-5 inches tall and weighs roughly 135 pounds. She has a chipped front left tooth and was wearing a gray sweatshirt, blue jeans and a pair of pink Chuck Taylor sneakers when she was last scene.
Staff Writer Eric Leins contributed to this story.
Anybody with information about Jones’ whereabouts should call the Modesto police at (209) 572-9500 or the GPD at 846-0300.
