Cuyahoga Falls police are asking the public for help finding a missing juvenile girl named Leah, who was last seen near the intersection of Phelps Avenue and 17th Street. She was last seen wearing a gray tie-dye shirt along with either black leggings or ripped jeans, according to police.
The Cuyahoga Falls Police Department is asking anyone with information to call 911 immediately or to reach the department directly at 330-928-2181, as reported by News 5 Cleveland. Leah is described as 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighing 150 pounds. Police said she was last seen near the corner of Phelps Avenue and 17th Street, an intersection situated in the North Haven residential neighborhood of northern Cuyahoga Falls, according to Homes.com, an area made up largely of established single-family residential streets near local parks and schools.
How Ohio Police Are Required to Respond
Under Section 2901.30 of the Ohio Revised Code, law enforcement agencies statewide are legally barred from imposing any waiting period before accepting or investigating a report that a child is missing, according to Ohio law. That means the Cuyahoga Falls Police Department, which operates out of headquarters at 2310 2nd Street and serves Summit County's second-largest municipality with roughly 51,000 residents, was obligated to begin searching for Leah as soon as her disappearance was reported.
Standard Ohio law enforcement protocol also calls for officers to obtain a recent photograph of a missing minor and forward it to the Ohio Missing Children's Clearinghouse to generate an official missing person poster, per guidelines outlined by the Beachwood Police Department. Those posters are then distributed across state tracking networks and digital public portals to widen the search.
What the Statewide Numbers Show
Statewide, the scale of these cases is significant, but resolution rates remain high. The Ohio Attorney General's Office reported in May that 15,367 missing children reports were filed across Ohio in 2025, with 97.8 percent, or 15,024 children, recovered safely by year's end. Runaway incidents accounted for the vast majority of those cases, totaling 7,656 statewide, while stranger abductions comprised just two cases in all of Ohio last year.
Ohio agencies issued 18 Endangered Missing Child Alerts and four AMBER Alerts statewide in 2025, and all four AMBER Alerts ended in safe recoveries. An Endangered Missing Child Alert is issued when a missing minor is considered at risk of serious physical harm or death, but the case does not meet the stricter abduction criteria required for an AMBER Alert, under Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation guidelines. It is not yet known whether Cuyahoga Falls police have requested either type of alert in Leah's case.
Separately, Ohio lawmakers have been pushing to strengthen how missing person cases are tracked long-term. In March, the Ohio House of Representatives passed House Bill 217, known as the FIND Act, which would require local law enforcement agencies to submit long-term missing person reports to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System within 30 days, according to the Ohio House of Representatives. The legislation followed reporting that found roughly 1,000 Ohioans remain missing at any given time.
Anyone with information on Leah's whereabouts is urged to contact Cuyahoga Falls police at 330-928-2181 or to call 911 immediately. The Ohio Attorney General's Missing Persons Unit also runs a toll-free, 24-hour hotline at 1-800-325-5604 to field tips from the public and coordinate resources with local departments.
