The Call
Dispatcher: 9-1-9-1-1 What is your emergency?
Autumn: Hi, um, I just woke up and my-my daughter ran away. She's not here.
Dispatcher: What is your address?
Autumn: Address Beaufort, South Carolina
Dispatcher: Okay, repeat that address one more time for me.
Autumn: Address
Dispatcher: Okay, and how old is she?
Autumn: She-She's 12.
Dispatcher: Any idea where she may have gone?
Autumn: No. We thought a friend's, but I called there and she's not there. I don't even know, I don't even, she doesn't even know anybody really over here very much. I mean a couple kids and stuff, but they're really young and their parents would say... I don't even know. I don't even know.
Dispatcher: Has she done this before?
Autumn: No. Not that I know of. Maybe. ugh. (To Kiel) Can you go look around?
Dispatcher: Do you happen to know what she had been wearing?
Kiel: Black USMC sweatshirt.
Autumn: Black USMC sweatshirt, possibly?
Dispatcher: Possibly, what?
Autumn: Black USMC sweatshirt, possibly. I don't, ugh, I don't know. I'm so, I don't know. I'm not one-hundred percent sure. (Inaudible due to crying)
Dispatcher: It's okay, and what is your first and last name?
Autumn: Autumn Hol-Hollis
Dispatcher: I'm sorry Ms. Hollis, I didn't hear what your first name was.
Autumn: Autumn.
Dispatcher: Autumn?
Autumn: Yeah
Dispatcher: Alright, Ms. Hollis what is a good callback number for you?
Autumn: Phone Number
Dispatcher: Alright ma'am, I will get an officer out there to meet with you.
Autumn: Okay, thanks.
Dispatcher: You're welcome, Bye.
End Call
Sunday, February 16th 2025
At around 8:00 am Autumn and I woke up to get ready for church after I slapped the snooze button on my alarm clock since 6:00 am. We like the early service at our church because it has less of a crowd, not because we like waking up before 10:00 am on a weekend. I had the daunting duty of going down the hall to the living room to wake up my son. He loves to sleep on the couch whenever he can get a chance, he hates his actual bed, to this day I might add, he begged me to get. Also, being as I was the one going to the living room, I was tasked with making the coffee. There is a never-ending squabble between Autumn and I about who has to make the coffee in the morning. For some reason, the maximum of the 3 minutes it takes to make coffee is an absolute inconvenience to the both of us and we both try to get out of making it.
Still dreary-eyed and trying to comprehend the fact that I was awake, I was trying to tell my son to get up when Autumn yelled, “Emily isn’t here.”
“What do you mean Emily isn’t here?” I was confused. It wasn’t a question I was expecting right after I wake up. Also, it’s 8:00 in the morning, what do you mean she’s not here?
“She’s not in her room. She has her pillows and stuffed animals placed to look like she was sleeping.” Emily had gone to the length of putting a sweatshirt on her extra large teddy bear to make it look like she was sleeping with her hoodie on. Which wasn’t unusual for her to do. To be clear, she sleeps with her dog Bay Bay or Bay, or in my eyes for a while, Traitor, who for some reason, had been whining at her door to be let out when we got up. This wasn’t something normal. Emily, typically, lets Bay outside when he starts whining or, at a minimum, lets him roam the living room to get into all the random food that’s been left out, half-full cups, and/or the trash can until someone wakes fully up in the morning. “The camera has been unplugged.”
We had little more than minimal security system, at the time. A Vivint security salesperson, doing door-to-door sales, had done a good job at convincing us we needed a security system and that it wasn’t out of our price range. We decided not to go with the package that has the main hub that all the devices plug into, but to have them individually plugged into the nearest outlet the installer could find, by far the cheapest option. What we were sold, originally, was one camera with a light to cover our driveway and a doorbell camera to catch the package thieves we have never had. The camera in question was added later. This camera was placed right above Emily’s window. She had told us a friend, that she was not allowed to be seeing anymore, was sneaking out in the middle of the night to come see her. This particular camera was the camera that had been unplugged. And, in our infinite wisdom, had it plugged into the outlet in Emily’s bathroom.
I walked back to the living room/kitchen and was thinking about what the hell was going on and Autumn, again, yells from Emily’s bedroom, “Should I call the police?”
I thought about it for a second. Is that really necessary? She’s probably just down the road at her friend’s house. Or, at most, she is walking the streets and still hasn’t came home yet. But either way, the police need to be called, to at a minimum, drive the point home to her to, hopefully, not sneak out again. “Yeah, call the police…”
End Scene
Just for this beginning portion of our saga there were A LOT of mistakes we made, some more apparent than others, and more context that needs to be added, which, I will try to go into here.
Autumn said “ran away” in the call to the police. At the time, Autumn and I’s definition of runaway was like it was when we were kids. Just walking down the road trying to get away for a moment, possibly with a knapsack on the end of stick. We had no clue at the time that that word had a negative stigma to law enforcement or what that label meant. We now know for a lot of people, not all, “runaway” implies that there is something wrong with the child. Either they’re doing drugs, not happy with their home lives, not happy with their parents, and/or just want to get away to show some kind of superiority to their supposed authorities. We didn’t realize that runaways could be an inconvenience to law enforcement. A waste of resources. Autumn should have said, “missing.” The local law enforcement still would have labeled her as a runaway, due to the fact that she was a minor. But, Autumn saying “ran away” implied that we knew that she had left on her own volition, which we didn’t. She just used the first word that felt the most applicable at the time.
Autumn said, “No. I don’t know. Maybe,” to the question asking if she had done this before. I didn’t comprehend Autumn had said this at the time. She was standing right next to me in the kitchen when she was on the phone and the phone was on speaker. Previously, 4 or 5 nights prior to her going missing, Emily had unplugged the camera. Autumn, when it happened on the previous evening, saw it but didn’t react. Emily likes to watch videos on doing hair and make-up. She frequently comes out of her room with a different hair style from some far off metropolis or some kind of weird ritual make-up style on her, haphazardly smattered on her face. So unplugging the camera could of meant anything. The next morning, Autumn confronted Emily about unplugging the camera and Emily’s excuse was that she was blow-drying her hair and needed the outlet. Autumn, to this day, regrets not going back there that night and confronting her on unplugging the camera. But here’s the thing: we had the cameras because we didn’t trust other people, not because we didn’t trust our children. It never entered our mind that she would be sneaking out.
Having the camera plugged into the outlet in her bathroom. What a dumbass. We trusted Emily. Plain and simple, we trusted her. We didn’t trust anyone else. Should we have? Absolutely, not. There were previous signs that proved she couldn’t be trusted. But, to us, sneaking out wasn’t even on our minds. That sounded crazy for her to do.
Who had Autumn called? Emily’s friend’s mom, that’s a mouthful. She wasn’t supposed to be seeing this girl anymore, but we knew they still wanted to hang out with each other. Point being, that’s who she called. She answered the second time calling. Autumn explained to her the situation and asked her if she was there. The mom said, “no.” Then, Autumn asked her to check her daughter’s bedroom to make sure she wasn’t there. Which she did.