Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
CLARK, N.J. — The teenager who sent an alarming tweet Sunday evening asking her Twitter followers to call 911 was likely a runaway, police are now saying.
Kara Alongi, 16, tweeted Sunday at 6:12 p.m. that "There is someone in my hour ecall 911."
The teen's parents arrived home around 7:20 p.m. and called police, the Star-Ledger reports. K-9 units tracked her scent from her back door, through a neighbor's yard and around a corner before the scent went cold.
Clark police said shortly before midnight that police no longer believed Alongi had been kidnapped.
"We don't feel any foul play was involved," he said. "There was nothing disturbed inside the home."
There is somone in my hour ecall 911
— Kara Alongi (@KaraAlongi) September 30, 2012
Additionally, records show a call was made for a cab at Alongi's address at about the same time she posted the tweet. A cab driver confirmed to police that he had picked up a girl matching Alongi's description and taken her to the Rahway Train Station, according to Fox New York.
The tweet sparked a movement on Twitter to get #findkara trending, meaning it was one of the most mentioned phrases on the social networking site. More than 32,000 people had retweeted Alongi's plea for help by Monday morning. The girl's follower count had grown to 94,000 by that point.
Multiple Facebook pages were created as well, including one that had more than 5,000 "likes" as of Monday.
Alongi's case is now being investigated as that of a runaway teen.
