Parents of 12-year-old girl unhappy with police handling
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
On Saturday, Feb. 15, 12-year-old Emily Hollis went missing from her home in Beaufort, S.C.
She was last seen in the company of 16-year-old Chase Eskeets and both children were reported by the Beaufort Police Department as runaways.
Since then, both children were found and returned to their homes unharmed several days later, but the situation has sparked a much bigger conversation over social media – can a 12-year-old consent to run away from home or is it an abduction?
Shortly after the police publicly shared that Hollis and Eskeets were reported as runaways, Hollis’ parents took to Facebook in a live video in hopes of putting additional pressure on the police to help them find their daughter.
In the video, the Hollises tearfully plea for the public to help because they were told that the police do not assign an investigator to look for runaways.
“My daughter is 12 years old,” Autumn Hollis, Emily’s mother said in the video. “She needs to have people looking for her, police officers, too – here in Beaufort – not just the people.”
In a second video, Emily’s father took to social media and shared that in a meeting with Beaufort Police Chief Stephanie Price, she questioned why he was not in Florida looking for his daughter, which was the last location she had been spotted.
According to the video, Price allegedly went around the room and asked every person in there if they would have gone to Florida to look for their child and had them respond.
Her father said that he was advised by the Jacksonville Police to not come down and to stay in Beaufort.
Again, he pleaded with the Beaufort Police to issue an AMBER alert for his daughter because of her age, saying she did not run away because she is too young to make that decision for herself.
“My daughter is 12 years old,” he said in the video. “She is not missing, she is not a runaway, she is missing. She is 12. She has no consent. A 16-year-old has consent.”
He said that the Beaufort Police department would not issue an AMBER alert because the circumstances did not rise to the level of an AMBER alert despite the parents of Eskeets wanting to make a statement on a conference call that they believed that Hollis was in eminent danger.
Both children were found unharmed, but this did not do anything to quell the comments from people who are critical of the way that this case, and other similar ones in Beaufort County, were handled.
The online outrage led the Beaufort City Council to draft an open letter to “address the concerns surrounding the case of the two runaway children.”
The letter addresses most of the topics that were raised on social media such as accusations that the Beaufort Police Department did not investigate or do anything in response to the report of a runaway, the decision to not utilize an AMBER alert and calling Hollis’ disappearance an abduction and not labeling her a runaway.
Additionally, they address the accusations that Chief Price gaslit the Hollis’ father as to why he was not in Florida, stating that she “explained that his presence there and the ability to personally interact with local law enforcement agencies, identify any patterns, nuances and file documents – as the parent—might be of more value when the children were located in Florida.”
Ultimately, the letter states that the City Council believes that the Police Department treated the case with all of the “care, diligence, compassion and personal attention” as other similar cases, potentially even more so because of the public outcry on social media in response to the sharing of “misinformation”.
While some seemed happy with the response from the City Council, many were not, calling the letter a “cover-up” and stating that the letter did not get to the real issue, which is that Hollis never should have been labeled as a runaway in the first place due to her age.
Emily Hollis’ parents have hired an attorney and did not speak to The Island News on their advice.
Beaufort Police Chief Stephanie Price did not return phone calls from The Island News seeking comment.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
