Camden County Police are asking for the public's help finding 16-year-old Brihana Cruz, who was reported missing from the 1200 block of Chase Street in the city's Whitman Park neighborhood. She's described as a Hispanic female standing 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighing about 120 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a black t-shirt, green pajama pants, and gray Crocs.
The department shared the appeal in a Camden County Police Department Facebook post Wednesday titled “MISSING: Help us find our neighbor Brihana,” a headline that echoes the department's typical approach to broadcasting juvenile missing person cases to the community. Police say Cruz is known to frequent both Whitman Park and the adjacent Fairview neighborhood, which sits just to the east within Camden City limits, according to Places4Students. The two sections are connected by dedicated neighborhood shuttle service, per Camden County, making movement between the two areas common for residents.
Where She Went Missing
The 1200 block of Chase Street, where Cruz was last reported, runs through a residential corridor of Whitman Park, according to property records reviewed via Zillow. The block has also drawn attention from the Camden Redevelopment Agency, which has targeted property rehabilitation projects along that same stretch of Chase Street in recent years, per agency documents.
Camden County Police have not released additional details about the circumstances surrounding Cruz's disappearance. Anyone with information about her whereabouts is asked to call the CCPD tip line at (856) 757-7042.
What the Numbers Say About Missing Teens
New Jersey law enforcement agencies are barred from imposing any waiting period before accepting a missing person report and must take such reports immediately, according to guidance shared by the Ewing Police Department that cites New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice rules. That immediate-response requirement is paired with encouraging statewide outcomes: New Jersey State Police data cited by New Jersey 101.5 indicates roughly 85 percent of missing minors in the state are classified as runaways, and law enforcement recovers 99 percent of those young runaways.
Federal data compiled by Child Find of America shows two-thirds of youth involved in runaway episodes fall between 15 and 17 years old, and more than half return home within a week. Nationally, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children assisted in 32,167 missing child cases in 2025, achieving a 90 percent overall recovery rate, according to MissingKids.org. The New Jersey State Police Missing Persons Unit, created under 1984 state legislation, serves as the statewide clearinghouse for such cases and oversees AMBER Alerts and Child Abduction Response Teams when warranted.
A Pattern of Cases in Camden
Cruz's case marks the latest in a string of missing teen alerts issued by Camden County Police in recent months. Hoodline previously covered the search for 17-year-old Aaric Purcell just last week, along with searches for missing teens Christopher Marrero, Willie Turner Jr., Jayden Jones, and Zy'airia Scurry from the same general area of the city over the past two years. No further details on Cruz's case have been released as the search continues.
