COLUMBIA, S.C. — Two children in Lexington County have been missing from their foster home since Wednesday, but local agencies say foster children running away or being reported missing is growing more common.
Neville and Bre Ritchey have not been seen since they left their home in the Whitehall neighborhood in Irmo at around 8 p.m. The pair have not been found yet, and the Lexington County Sheriff's Department says they are working with other neighboring agencies to continue searching.
Although the children were living in South Carolina, they are originally from North Carolina and are not in SC DSS custody.
According to the Child Crime Prevention and Safety Center, a child goes missing every 40 seconds in the United States with thousands of these missing incidents going unreported.
Private investigator, Chandra Cleveland says foster kids running away is becoming a more common thing.
The Department of Social Services explained that children in foster care who run away are reported to the National Crime Information Center Database just like any other missing child would be.
DSS sent a statement explaining that efforts to find missing foster children are often a partnership between their agency and law enforcement. Their representatives said "When children in foster care run away the primary mechanism for finding them is a report to law enforcement...Along with meeting with family and caregivers in an attempt to determine factors that may have contributed to the child running away, and reaching out to friends, acquaintances, teammates, teachers, coaches, etc."
Cleveland says parents and guardians can often figure out if a child is going to try to run away before it happens.
"You need to make sure you're looking in their face each and every day, watch the signs of the body language, the clothing they will do, and the conversations they will say," Cleveland explained. "If they say 'I don't care what we do', and everything is 'I don't care'. There's something wrong there that you need to dig a little deeper with."
According to the Nation Center for Missing and Exploited Children there are currently 71 missing children in our state, not including the Ritchey kids in Lexington.
If you have any information on where Neville and Bre Ritchey could be, call Crimestoppers at 1-888-CRIME-SC.