Two Habersham County teenagers ran away together over the weekend, with parents and law enforcement frantically trying to locate them.
Habersham Central juniors Joseph Attard and Dorothy Krei disappeared from their homes sometime early Saturday morning. Krei’s parents realized she was gone but had not taken her car, and they contacted Habersham County Sheriff’s deputies. They later discovered that her boyfriend, Attard, also vanished and that the two were likely together somewhere.
Attard also left his car at his home, along with his wallet, debit card and phone.
“My husband asked me around 9:30 a.m. where Joseph was and I said he was in his room,” Attard’s mother Penny Welborn said. “But the phone was in there, he was not.”
Krei also left her actual phone behind, Habersham County Sheriff’s deputies said in a release.
Welborn said both teens left notes behind, with her son’s being “short and sweet” and Krei’s being two pages long.
After a $10,000 reward was posted on social media, a tip came in that a woman had seen the pair getting into a black Honda Civic in Lavonia on Interstate 85. They were later seen somewhere in South Carolina as well, but that was the last alleged sighting.
Welborn said she believes some friends met the two runaways at Pitts Park and gave them a ride somewhere to pick up another ride and so forth.
“It concerns me that they are hitchhiking,” Welborn said. “People with good intentions don’t pick up hitchhikers these days.”
Investigators had reason to believe they were heading for Florida initially based on some previous social media posts, but they now believe their destination was the mountains, either Asheville, N.C., or somewhere in Eastern Tennessee.
Attard asked his mother in recent weeks what she would do if he ran away.
“I told him I would ping his phone, check his credit cards and try to find him,” Welborn said. “I gave him a roadmap on how to run away.”
Habersham County Sheriff’s Investigators continue to follow-up on each lead that comes into the office, according to their release. Anyone with information regarding the possible whereabouts of the runaway juveniles is encouraged to contact Investigator Cale Garrison at 706-839-0559.
“We weren’t getting any tips until we put up the reward,” Welborn said. “If we can’t come up with a concrete lead or find the burner phone that she is using, the police have basically said they can’t do anything.”
Welborn said the note from her son indicated they might return by next summer.