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Chiba schoolgirl missing for a month

17 Comments

Police in Chiba Prefecture are asking for the public's help in locating a 17-year-old girl who went missing last month.

According to police, Sayaka Nakagawa, a schoolgirl from Mobara, was reported missing by her family on July 13, two days after she was last seen. Since that time, police say they have yet to obtain any potential leads.

Fuji TV reported Thursday that a 30-strong team has been sent to the area to search for more clues.

Chiba prefectural police have made Nakagawa's photograph public and are appealing for anyone with any information about her whereabouts to get in contact with them.

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17 Comments
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Thoughts out to this girls family.

Chiba prefectural police has made Nakagawa’s photograph public and are appealing for anyone with any information about her whereabouts to get in contact with them.

Does this mean that in Japan/this case photos of missing children are not usually released to the public at the time of disapperance? Can anyone clarify?

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Does this mean that in Japan/this case photos of missing children are not usually released to the public at the time of disapperance? Can anyone clarify?

I would say this would be normal anywhere since they would always put the possibility of kidnapping first. Then probably afterwards, if there is no such danger, they would release the photo for a wider search.

I hope she comes home safely!

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@TSRnow Wouldn't it be logical to release the photo right away BECAUSE of the risk of kidnapping???

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SueJones: I was thinking the same thing. Get the information out as soon as possible in the event she's spotted. Isn't it common to try to gather as much information as quickly as possible; interviewing the parents and neighbors, gathering possible evidence, etc? I'm not sure what the protocol is in Japan but I think that in the U.S., you do not have to wait 24 hours to report anyone under 18 missing.

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Let's hope she just ran away with her boyfriend and will come to her senses soon.

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So the police fumble around trying to find her and the public are only notified after almost a month? These cases are often solved with the public's help and usually the first couple of days, if not hours are the most critical. It also bugs me that police here rarely even show the CCTV images of the last time the person was seen. It was reported that police were analyzing the footage of her which was seen on CCTV.... not shown to the public though... maybe that happens after two months..

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Oh, I hope it's just a case of a teenager storming off in a huff after an argument with her parents, but one month is an awfully long time for a girl to go missing without a trace. Teens do some crazy stuff. One night I snuck out my bedroom window to go clubbing with friends, and snuck back in again at dawn, assuming that my mother hadn't noticed my absence. Unfortunately for me she had, and was on the verge of calling the police. Why did her parents wait for two days? Not getting the full story here.

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I sure wouldn't wait two days to notify police if I were her father.

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Facebook profile 100006558690387, one of the eight Sayaka Nakagawa's on facebook, just went dark. What that means is that her privacy settings are set to ultra private. Odd move for those of us who understand that facebook privacy doesn't really exist. Her two friends have went dark as well.

Anyone got any other websites with more relevant info?

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Sue Jones, I thought that kidnappers usually would not want the police in the picture, let alone attention from the media.

Another way to look at this, maybe the police thought this was just another case of a runaway child (I hear there are quite a number of them in Japan) so they though she would be back by the time they put her picture up all over the place?

Sorry, I am just speculating.

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Hope she returns safely to her family!

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In the U.S, the 'Amber Alert' system send out the information to all forms of media and also sends some kind of emails/phone alarms as well.

Although I realize this is not a very reliable way to reference, all TV and movie seem to indicate that only when a ransom note is sent do the parents not inform the police, or keep it real hush/hush. Not sure where to get hard stats on that.

But, I will join the others who are hopeful that this is a teenage rebellion thing, which would at least explain why the parents waited to contact the police, having a reason to suspect she would return and was just figuring she was blowing off steam or something.

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Amber Alerts are excellent. Yes they put relevant info on electronic billboards on highways, send out to cell phones and broadcast on the radio. It's been extremely successful when a description of a car is involved. There are very specific guidelines to use an Amber Alert which may not have applied here anyway. But at least there should have been photos of her put out for the public. It's said that the chance of a child's survival of a kidnapping decreases dramatically after just a few hours. After that they will most likely have been killed unfortunately.

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a tough job for police and the 30 strong team sent to look for more clues in this whole huge society, good luck!

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@justbcuzisay. The amber alert in the US is mostly targeted with helping lost white children. If she were a minority, (remember Amber Dubious, ) the amber alert would more than likely not be issued. A Japanese girl might have a shot.

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Chinpira, Sue Jones, Ambrosia,

What often hapens here in Japan is the parents ask the police not to announce it because they think she has just run away. So the police have actually been already searching, and the media and neighbours have known about her being missing, but it hasn't been announced. After a month, the parents give up on beliveing she's just gone iede (runaway from home like a teen rebellion), and the police have got parent's permission to ask public for help. Teens running away from home for a week or two is pretty common here in Japan.

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Lunchbox: What often hapens here in Japan is the parents ask the police not to announce it because they think she has just run away.

First, why would the parents even go to the police if they think their child has just run away? That doesn't really make sense. Second, teens running away from home is relatively common where I'm from too. However, if the parents go to the police and file a missing person report the choice becomes the police's whether or not to make that public, not the parents', though the parents could certainly go directly to the media if they chose. Police policies are not set by parents. Then again this is Japan, the same place where the police reversed their policy on not allowing two children to be carried on one bicycle because a bunch of mothers complained about the inconvenience of it. Apparently, the police cared more about the mothers' being inconvenienced than the children's safety.

Aaron Loki Brummett: The amber alert in the US is mostly targeted with helping lost white children. If she were a minority, (remember Amber Dubious, ) the amber alert would more than likely not be issued

I'm not at all trying to dismiss your point and understand what you're saying but according to the Amber Alert statistics (p.19), in 2011, for example, 48% of Amber Alerts were for white children while 33% were for black children. The black population of the States is about 13% of the whole so according to those statistics, as a percentage of the population, black children were statistically overrepresented by Amber Alerts.

http://www.amberalert.gov/pdfs/11_amber_report.pdf

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