Pasco County deputies are searching for a missing 46-year-old Wesley Chapel woman named Kahlani Hunter, who was last seen around 1 p.m. Saturday in the Ryerson Circle area near her home. She has brown hair and brown eyes, stands about 5-foot-6, and weighs around 250 pounds, though what she was wearing when she disappeared remains unknown.
According to Tampa Bay 28, the Pasco Sheriff's Office is asking anyone with information to call 727-847-8102, option 7, or submit a tip through the agency's online portal. Ryerson Circle sits within the Pasco Woods Apartments complex, a multi-family residential community in the 33544 ZIP code that anchors this stretch of eastern Wesley Chapel, according to Apartments.com.
Volunteers Point Toward a Tampa Movie Theater
Beyond the sheriff's office bulletin, a Florida volunteer search-and-recovery group called We Are The Essentials says it is working directly with Hunter's family and has turned up additional details. Per the organization's Facebook page, Hunter goes by the nickname “Connie,” is known to enjoy long walks, and may have last been near the AMC Highwoods Preserve 20 movie theater in the New Tampa area of Hillsborough County.
That theater sits at 18002 Highwoods Preserve Parkway, roughly 5 to 7 miles south of Wesley Chapel near Interstate 75, according to the same Facebook posting. The detail suggests Hunter may have crossed county lines on foot, a reminder that Wesley Chapel residents routinely travel into the New Tampa corridor for shopping and entertainment along I-75.
How Pasco Deputies Handle Missing-Adult Cases
The Pasco Sheriff's Office's District 2 division, headquartered in Dade City, provides primary patrol coverage to more than 188,000 residents across eastern Pasco County, including Wesley Chapel, per the agency's own account of its patrol structure. Members of the public cannot comment directly on the department's missing-person alerts on social media; Pasco deputies disabled public comments across their official channels in 2022 to keep time-sensitive leads from getting buried in comment threads, as Hoodline has previously reported.
Florida law leaves no room for delay in cases like Hunter's. Under Florida Statute § 937.021, law enforcement agencies must accept a missing adult report immediately upon filing with the agency covering the area where the person was last seen, with no mandatory waiting period. Separately, Florida Statute § 937.0201 lays out when a missing adult age 26 or older can be classified as a “missing endangered person,” a designation that applies if law enforcement suspects danger, criminal activity, or eligibility for a Silver or Purple Alert. It remains unclear whether Hunter's case has been classified under that statute.
A Fast-Growing Corner of Pasco County
Wesley Chapel remains unincorporated, meaning it depends entirely on Pasco County government and the sheriff's office for services, and it has grown rapidly in recent years — its population climbed from 64,866 in the 2020 census to an estimated 78,400 residents by 2026, according to Data USA figures. That growth mirrors a broader trend across Pasco County, whose population expanded 639% between 1970 and 2020 and is projected to add more than 223,000 more residents by 2045, with much of that expansion concentrated in corridors like Wesley Chapel, per county government data.
We Are The Essentials, the nonprofit assisting Hunter's family, was founded in 2021 by former military service members and law enforcement officers and provides search-and-recovery services to families at no cost, according to the Osprey Observer. The group is made up of licensed private investigators and volunteers who often deploy drones and search dogs on active missing-person cases across Central Florida.
Whether deputies have reviewed surveillance footage from the Highwoods Preserve theater, or whether ground teams are actively combing the I-75 corridor between Wesley Chapel and New Tampa, has not been detailed publicly. Anyone with information on Hunter's whereabouts is urged to contact the Pasco Sheriff's Office.
