Pasco Sheriff's deputies are searching for 14-year-old Serenity Bell, who was last seen Saturday around 1:40 p.m. in the Bluff Meadow Court area of Wesley Chapel. Bell is described as 5 feet 9 inches tall and around 120 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes, and was last seen wearing a black hoodie, black shorts, a white shirt, black sneakers and a gold chain.
The Pasco Sheriff's Office posted the missing-person alert Sunday, asking anyone with information on Bell's whereabouts to come forward. Bluff Meadow Court sits within the Oak Creek Phase 1 subdivision, a master-planned Wesley Chapel community off Handcart Road and Spring Oak Trail that includes single-family homes, a community pool, basketball courts, a dog park and nearby conservation land, according to Compass Real Estate.
Deputies are directing the public to call the agency's non-emergency line at 727-847-8102, option 7, or submit tips online at pascosheriff.com/tips. The sheriff's office does not continuously monitor its social media accounts and has disabled public comments on official posts to keep time-sensitive leads from being missed, a policy the agency put in place in 2022 after high comment volumes made it harder to track useful information, per the Tampa Bay Times.
A Familiar Search Protocol in Wesley Chapel
Bell's case is the latest in a string of missing juvenile searches Pasco deputies have handled in and around Wesley Chapel this year. Hoodline reported that 13-year-old Amiyah Johnson was found safe just a day earlier, and 16-year-old Dakota Rubel was located safely after a weeklong search earlier in August. Similar appeals went out this year for teens in Land O' Lakes, New Port Richey and elsewhere in Wesley Chapel, underscoring how often deputies turn to public tips to close these cases quickly.
Florida law leaves little room for delay in cases like Bell's. Under Florida Statute § 937.021, law enforcement agencies must accept missing child reports immediately, without waiting periods or court orders, and enter case details into state and national databases within two hours of receipt. Separately, Florida Statute § 937.0201 classifies any missing person under 18 as a “missing child” and a “missing endangered person,” which guarantees full investigative resources regardless of whether the teen is considered a runaway.
Why This Isn't a Statewide Alert
Bell's case has not triggered a statewide Missing Child Alert or AMBER Alert, which under Florida Department of Law Enforcement guidelines require specific evidence of life-threatening danger or abduction. That distinction is why county sheriffs handle cases like this through local channels and public tip portals rather than emergency broadcast systems, with FDLE's Missing Endangered Persons Information Clearinghouse coordinating alerts statewide when that higher threshold is met.
The Pasco Sheriff's Office also maintains a federally certified Missing and Abducted Child Team, certified through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's Missing Kids Readiness Program. The team can deploy detectives, intelligence analysts, victim advocates, drone teams, aviation units and K-9 tracking resources during active searches for missing juveniles.
National and Regional Numbers Favor Safe Recoveries
Nationally, endangered runaways made up 92% of the 32,167 missing child cases the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children supported in 2025, with law enforcement and partner agencies achieving a 90% overall recovery rate, according to the organization. That trend has held locally, with recent Wesley Chapel searches for teens like Johnson and Rubel ending safely within hours to days after public tip requests went out.
Regional cooperation has also played a role in past cases. Multi-agency task force operations across Tampa Bay, involving the U.S. Marshals Service, FDLE, and sheriff's offices in Pasco, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, located or recovered 60 endangered missing children ages 9 to 17 during 2024 operations. Neighboring agencies including the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office routinely cross-list and coordinate missing runaway notices to help locate teens who may cross the Pasco-Hillsborough county line.
It is not yet known whether investigators have established a direction Bell may have traveled in, whether surveillance video from the Oak Creek neighborhood exists, or whether Hillsborough County deputies are actively assisting in this particular search. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Pasco Sheriff's Office non-emergency line or submit a tip online.
