Cincinnati Police are asking the public for help finding 14-year-old Mackenzie McCane, who has been missing since Sunday afternoon and may now be roughly eight to ten miles across town in Westwood with an unknown male. She was last seen around 1:30 p.m. on August 9 leaving her grandmother's home in Evanston, wearing a dark gray t-shirt, light blue shorts, a black hoodie with an anime character on the wrist, and black fuzzy slippers.
According to a bulletin from the Cincinnati Police Department, investigators believe Mackenzie, who is Black, 5-foot-6 and 230 pounds with brown eyes and black hair, may have left home to meet up with an unidentified male, though the exact conditions surrounding her disappearance remain unknown. The case has been assigned incident number 2026-INC-015743, and Detective J. Metz of District 2's investigative unit is listed as the point of contact. Anyone with information is asked to call Metz directly at 513-979-4400, or reach police dispatch at 911 or 513-765-1212.
The Ohio Attorney General's Office also maintains an official state missing-child poster for Mackenzie, which directs tips to the Cincinnati Emergency Communications Center in addition to police investigators, according to the Ohio Attorney General's Office.
A Cross-Town Search Spanning Two Police Districts
Evanston, where Mackenzie was last seen, falls under Cincinnati Police District 2, the geographically largest of the city's patrol districts, covering 15 East Side neighborhoods with 104 sworn officers, per the City of Cincinnati. Westwood, the West Side neighborhood where investigators believe she may now be, sits in District 3, which spans 20 square miles and serves about 95,000 residents across 14 neighborhoods, city data shows.
The two neighborhoods are separated by roughly 8 to 10 miles, meaning any effort to trace Mackenzie's path likely requires coordination across separate patrol jurisdictions on opposite ends of the city, according to city geographic data. That distance underscores why investigators are treating this as more than a routine wellness check within a single neighborhood.
What Ohio Law Says About Adults Sheltering Runaway Minors
Under Ohio law, an adult who knowingly aids, harbors, or induces a runaway minor can be charged with contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of a child, a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail and fines up to $1,000, per Ohio Revised Code § 2919.24. A separate statute, ORC § 2919.23, makes enticing, taking, or withholding a child under 18 from a legal guardian a crime of interference with custody — also a first-degree misdemeanor that can become a felony if the child is taken out of state.
State law also imposes obligations on police once a report like Mackenzie's is filed. Under ORC § 2901.30, agencies receiving a missing child report must promptly investigate and immediately enter the child's descriptive information into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database, according to the Ohio Attorney General's Office. Separately, Ohio's Endangered Missing Child Alert framework — coordinated by the state's Bureau of Criminal Investigation and local police — allows authorities to push targeted advisories by email, text, and social media when a missing child is believed to be at risk of serious harm, even when the case does not meet the stricter criteria for a full AMBER Alert, per the Ohio Association of Broadcasters.
Statewide Numbers Offer Some Context
Mackenzie's case unfolds against a backdrop of thousands of similar reports statewide each year. Ohio law enforcement agencies logged 15,367 missing children reports in 2025, down from 16,404 the year before, with 7,656 of those cases categorized as runaway youth, according to the 2025 Ohio Missing Children Clearinghouse Report. The same report found that 97.8% of children reported missing in Ohio last year — 15,024 kids — were safely recovered by year's end.
Those numbers don't resolve what happened to Mackenzie, but they do offer some perspective for a family waiting on word. For now, police have not disclosed the identity of the man they believe she may be with, and the circumstances behind her leaving her grandmother's home remain unknown. Anyone with information is urged to contact Detective Metz or police dispatch using the numbers listed above.
