A 13-year-old girl named Zaria has been missing since late Friday night, last seen around 11 p.m. on September 4 in the 400 block of Brook Ridge Avenue in DeKalb County, near the Tucker community. Police describe her as 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighing about 120 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes, and say she was wearing a black shirt, a gray hoodie, and black jeans when she disappeared.
The DeKalb County Police Department is asking the public for help locating Zaria, according to FOX 5 Atlanta, which reported that the information came from a Facebook post shared by the department. Anyone with information is asked to contact the department's Special Victims Unit at 770-724-7710. Police have not released any additional details about the circumstances surrounding Zaria's disappearance.
The Special Victims Unit, which is leading the search, operates within the department's Criminal Investigation Division and typically handles cases involving missing juveniles alongside child abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence investigations, according to DeKalb County, GA. The Brook Ridge Avenue block where Zaria was last seen sits in the 30340 ZIP code area, a residential stretch of northern DeKalb County near major roadways, per Trulia.
Why No Amber Alert Has Been Issued
Some community members may wonder why Georgia's emergency child-abduction alert has not been activated in Zaria's case. The state's system, known as Levi's Call and administered by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, can only be triggered for confirmed child abductions where law enforcement believes the child faces imminent danger of serious bodily harm or death, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. General missing child or runaway reports do not meet that threshold unless investigators have evidence of an endangered abduction.
That does not mean the case is being treated casually behind the scenes. Georgia Code § 35-3-83 requires law enforcement agencies that receive a missing child report to immediately notify on-duty officers, alert adjoining jurisdictions, and transmit the case record to the Georgia Missing Children Information Center, as Hoodline detailed in its earlier coverage of a Gwinnett teen's disappearance. Federal law adds another layer of protection: under Suzanne's Law, codified at 34 U.S.C. § 41307, police departments are barred from enforcing any mandatory waiting period before accepting a missing youth report, and must immediately enter individuals under 21 into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database, per PowerDMS.
National Numbers Offer Some Reassurance, But Risks Remain
Nationally, the outlook for missing children skews hopeful. In 2025, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children assisted law enforcement with 32,167 missing child cases across the country, and 90 percent of those children were successfully recovered, according to the organization's own data. Still, the group has found that 1 in 6 endangered runaways reported to NCMEC nationwide are likely victims of child sex trafficking, underscoring why prompt tips and community vigilance matter while a child remains unaccounted for.
DeKalb County has faced this kind of search before. In February 2024, the department's Special Victims Unit issued concurrent public appeals for three separate 13-year-olds who had vanished from their homes in unrelated cases across the county. The county also runs broader efforts to help families of missing loved ones, including an annual Missing Persons and DNA Drive in Decatur that collects family reference samples and updates records in national databases like NCIC and NamUs.
As of now, investigators have not said whether they suspect foul play in Zaria's disappearance, whether surveillance or license-plate cameras near Brook Ridge Avenue have turned up any leads, or whether she has made contact with friends or family since she was last seen. Anyone with information on Zaria's whereabouts is urged to contact the DeKalb County Police Department's Special Victims Unit.
