Days After Mother Speaks Out, Lacking Daughter Discovered Alive

A lacking teen has been discovered alive days after her mom pleaded for her protected return on dwell tv. 

“Asata Amun has been situated and is protected,” Georgia’s Gwinnett County Police mentioned in a assertion Monday, March 17. “She has been within the custody of the Tennessee Division of Youngsters’s Providers since February 2024 below an alias.”

The announcement got here one week after her mom, Jasmine Dominique, spoke with Atlanta’s WSB-TV 2 and greater than a yr after Asata was final seen on her household’s doorbell digicam operating away barefoot. Asata was 16 when she disappeared.

“It’s not one thing simple for me. It’s arduous,” Dominique instructed the information station on March 10.

On April 18, 2024, Gwinnett County Police requested for the general public’s assist finding Asata after she went lacking on Feb. 1, 2024. Police mentioned her father, Kwabena Amun, screamed, “So you’re simply going to run like a coward. Asata.” Police additionally searched Amun’s dwelling. Asata’s two sisters have been faraway from the house by Youngsters’s Protecting Providers on account of complaints that Amun was bodily abusive, per WSB-TV.

“I really feel prefer it’s not widespread to not hear one thing in any respect,” Dominique mentioned.

Dominique was current in her youngster’s life, however lived in Connecticut. She instructed WSB-TV that her daughter known as her the final time she ran away from dwelling.

“She is aware of my quantity. She may have despatched me a message,” Dominique mentioned of Asata.

In a June 2014 interview with WSB-TV, Amun denied being abusive and instructed the information station, “I simply need to make sure that my child lady is okay. That she is alright.”

Amun mentioned Asaya had disciplinary points earlier than her disappearance and had gotten in bother at North Gwinnett Excessive Faculty. When he recommended she attend navy faculty, Asata was towards the thought, Amun instructed WSB-TV. He mentioned when she left, he thought she was simply going to go to a buddy.

The division beforehand mentioned {the teenager} “didn’t take any private objects together with her” when she left her dwelling, and famous that she was “disciplined by directors at her faculty” the day earlier than her disappearance.

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On Monday, police mentioned there was “a breakthrough within the case” when a Tennessee Division of Youngsters’s Providers case supervisor observed inconsistencies in Asata’s statements, which led them to look into lacking youngsters in Georgia. The case supervisor then contacted authorities in Gwinnett County.

“Preparations have been made to switch custody of Asata Amun to the Georgia Division of Household & Youngsters Providers. The investigation into her disappearance stays lively,” police mentioned Monday.

“I dropped the telephone after I heard it,” Dominique instructed WSB-TV on Monday after she heard the information. “I couldn’t imagine it.”