A missing teen has been found alive days after her mother pleaded for her safe return on live television.
“Asata Amun has been located and is safe,” Georgia’s Gwinnett County Police said in a statement Monday, March 17. “She has been in the custody of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services since February 2024 under an alias.”
The announcement came one week after her mother, Jasmine Dominique, spoke with Atlanta’s WSB-TV 2 and more than a year after Asata was last seen on her family’s doorbell camera running away barefoot. Asata was 16 when she disappeared.
“It’s not something easy for me. It’s hard,” Dominique told the news station on March 10.
On April 18, 2024, Gwinnett County Police asked for the public’s help locating Asata after she went missing on Feb. 1, 2024. Police said her father, Kwabena Amun, screamed, “So you are just going to run like a coward. Asata.” Police also searched Amun’s home. Asata’s two sisters were removed from the home by Children’s Protective Services due to complaints that Amun was physically abusive, per WSB-TV.
“I feel like it’s not common not to hear something at all,” Dominique said.
Dominique was present in her child’s life, but lived in Connecticut. She told WSB-TV that her daughter called her the last time she ran away from home.
Georgia teen Asata Amun.
Gwinnett County Police
“She knows my number. She could have sent me a message,” Dominique said of Asata.
In a June 2014 interview with WSB-TV, Amun denied being abusive and told the news station, “I just want to make sure my baby girl is okay. That she is alright.”
Amun said Asaya had disciplinary issues before her disappearance and had gotten in trouble at North Gwinnett High School. When he suggested she attend military school, Asata was against the idea, Amun told WSB-TV. He said when she left, he thought she was just going to visit a friend.
The department previously said the teenager “did not take any personal items with her” when she left her home, and noted that she was “disciplined by administrators at her school” the day before her disappearance.
On Monday, police said there was “a breakthrough in the case” when a Tennessee Department of Children’s Services case manager noticed inconsistencies in Asata’s statements, which led them to look into missing children in Georgia. The case manager then contacted authorities in Gwinnett County.
“Arrangements have been made to transfer custody of Asata Amun to the Georgia Department of Family & Children Services. The investigation into her disappearance remains active,” police said Monday.
“I dropped the phone when I heard it,” Dominique told WSB-TV on Monday after she heard the news. “I couldn’t believe it.”
