Family, investigators ask for help to find teen who ran away from home

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EAGLE MOUNTAIN — Family members and law enforcement officials are asking for help to find a 15-year-old girl from Eagle Mountain who has been missing for three weeks.

Kaylie English ran away from home sometime during the night of June 21. Her father, Jordan English, said he found a note on the morning of the 22nd from the teen telling her family not to look for her and that she wasn’t coming back.

“She seemed fine (before she left),” he said. “That weekend we went to the Parade of Homes with her and looked at a bunch of houses. Tuesday was fine. She went to Young Women’s and everyone said she was fine. She was having fun and then that night she ran away.”

Kaylie was in the news in August 2015 when a deputy from the Utah County Sheriff’s Office bought her a new skateboard after her skateboard was stolen. That same sheriff's office is working to find her now, but Sgt. Spencer Cannon said that while detectives are following several leads, they don’t have much to go on since the teen cut ties by deactivating her social media accounts.

Cannon said the sheriff’s office does not have any information that suggests something bad has happened to Kaylie at this time, other than that she has chosen to run away and is not in contact with her family.

“There’s no indication of foul play in this, but there are a lot of concerns about what could happen when a 15-year-old girl decides to run away or break out on her own, or whatever you might want to use to describe what she’s done,” he said. “There’s a lot of risks there.”

Family members hope Kaylie returns home quickly so they can make sure she is safe. Her father will also be moving to Kansas City for a job on July 19, with his wife and other children following sometime soon after, so he said he hopes to see her before then.

“She’s known about (the move) for a while,” he said. “I talked to her about it and she said she was fine with it. She was even looking on the internet at houses and things, trying to find a house that she liked. So I don’t know if she just ran away to hang out with her friends before we moved or what.”

Kaylie loves to play the guitar and skateboard. She took her guitar with her in a case that has newspaper print on it, according to her father. The family believes Kaylie left because she wanted to spend more time with friends and have a boyfriend.

“There are a lot of scary things that can happen to a child who thinks that they don’t like the life they have been living or the life that they have been dealt,” Cannon said. “This is no slam against kids, but the cold hard facts are that kids aren’t as experienced at protecting themselves as adults typically are.”

Cannon said the sheriff’s office is investigating a tip from someone who believes they saw Kaylie board a bus at the Greyhound station located in Salt Lake City that was heading to Reno, Nevada. Detectives are working to obtain surveillance video from both bus stations. Kaylie’s father noted that she does not have any friends in Reno that he knows of.

Kaylie is described as being 5-feet-2-inches tall and weighing 96 pounds, with hazel eyes and brown hair. She has braces and pierced ears. Anyone who has information about where she might be can contact the Utah County Sheriff’s Office by calling dispatch at 801-794-3970.

“It’s hard to imagine someone doesn’t know something who would be willing to say,” Cannon said.