Task force finds missing teen in abandoned St. Louis City building
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - A Lincoln County family is reunited with their 17-year-old thanks to a local group created to help find missing family .
Operation Any Means Necessary (OAMN), a community-based group, said Shaylyn Maxwell, 17, was found in an abandoned building in St. Louis Wednesday night. OAMN is one group under the Community Coalition Task Force.
Maxwell’s mother told First Alert 4 her daughter may have been trafficked.
“Could’ve been me,” Sarah Avery its. “The young woman we were talking with last night, I was expressing her that story on my side and that is what was able to help her.”
Avery said she ran away as a teen and wants to share her story to help others.
Avery said OAMN is made up of law enforcement, firefighters and community volunteers. Wednesday, they found Maxwell. The Lincoln County Sheriff’s office posted on social media that Maxwell disappeared from Moscow Mills nearly a month ago. “Emotional. But my wife was able to talk with her and keep her calm and she was able to go home with her family,” said Michael Avery, Sarah’s husband.
Michael Avery said that in the last month, they’ve found seven women, most of them have been trafficked. “To the point where they’re found in abandoned houses or drug houses and things like that because they’ve been through extensive abuse and trafficking, and now they’re in really the most dangerous phase,” said Cindy Malott. Malott is the Director of U. S. Safe with Crisis Aid International. Malott was She spoke generally about trafficking, saying it’s a big issue in the St. Louis Metro and around the globe.
She said roughly 80% of trafficking victims in the United States spend time in foster care or adoption . First Alert 4 asked the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office why Maxwell was in an abandoned building in St. Louis, but Maxwell’s mother told us her daughter may have been sex trafficked.
Adam Kavanaugh said kids as young as five years old are being trafficked online.
“Yeah, it surprised me quite a bit, too,” said Kavanaugh. “Online exploitation at young ages.”
Kavanaugh is the law enforcement liaison with Crisis Aid International. He explains young people are then wooed by the predator “So they take off, and they may leave or trust this person, and then they’re in a very dangerous situation. They’re overwhelmed before they know it,” said Malott. The Averys say they will continue their work to help bring more people home.
“Give them hope, give them aspirations, speak life over them. That’s really what it be, a mental battle within themselves, and that’s why they go search and look for those drugs, and look for the s or whatever the case may be.”
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