A 16-year-old Knoxville girl has been missing since late August, last seen near the Knoxville Botanical Gardens and believed by authorities to possibly be staying with a friend in the Magnolia Avenue area. Paietences Crenshaw-Kyle was reported missing by her aunt on August 27, and the case is now being circulated through a regional tip network rather than a statewide alert.
The missing teen bulletin, tagging the Knoxville Police Department, was shared Thursday by East Tennessee Valley Crime Stoppers on Facebook, describing Crenshaw-Kyle as standing 5 feet tall and weighing 105 pounds. The post asks the public to look for her and share the appeal widely, noting she is believed to possibly be staying with a friend in the Magnolia Avenue area of East Knoxville.
That last-known location and the area where she may be staying sit close together geographically. The Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum, a 47-acre public property at 2743 Wimpole Avenue, is roughly 0.6 miles south of East Magnolia Avenue via Cherry Street, according to the City of Knoxville. Magnolia Avenue is a major East Knoxville commercial corridor served directly by Knoxville Area Transit bus lines connecting the surrounding neighborhoods to downtown, meaning someone on foot near the gardens could easily reach the Magnolia corridor by bus or by walking the short distance between the two areas.
A Familiar Name in Knoxville's Missing Persons Cases
This is not the first time Crenshaw-Kyle, who also goes by the nickname Terry'onna, has been reported missing. According to a January 2026 post from Tennessee Missing and Unsolved on Facebook, she was previously reported missing in Knoxville in late December 2025 and was later spotted on January 7, 2026, getting off a KAT bus near West High School on Sutherland Avenue. That earlier sighting suggests a pattern of moving through Knoxville's public transit system that could again be relevant to the search.
Open questions remain in the current case, including her exact physical safety, whether the adults in the household where she may be staying know she has been formally reported missing, and whether police are conducting active welfare checks along the Magnolia Avenue corridor. None of those details have been addressed publicly as of Thursday's appeal.
How to Report a Tip
East Tennessee Valley Crime Stoppers is accepting anonymous tips about Crenshaw-Kyle's whereabouts through several channels: by phone at 877-363-8847, by texting ETTips to 738477, through the P3Tips app, or online at EastTNValleyCrimeStoppers.org. The organization guarantees total anonymity for tipsters, with no caller ID tracking, line recording, or court testimony required, and offers cash rewards of up to $2,000 for tips leading to recoveries or arrests.
Crime Stoppers was established on May 5, 2021, through a joint initiative involving Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon, the Knoxville Police Department, and local community leaders as an independent nonprofit. Between its launch and December 2023, the organization processed 6,072 anonymous tips across East Tennessee, leading to 118 arrests, 70 fugitive apprehensions, and $49,500 distributed in rewards, illustrating the scale of the network now being used to spread word of Crenshaw-Kyle's disappearance.
Why a Regional Alert Instead of a Statewide One
Cases like this one are typically routed through regional channels because the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation reserves its statewide Endangered Child Alerts for cases meeting specific safety thresholds, such as imminent physical danger, medical risk, or severe age vulnerability, rather than issuing alerts for every missing juvenile report. Tennessee also maintains a specialized Department of Children's Services Absconder Unit, split across Middle, East, and West Tennessee, that coordinates with the TBI Missing Children unit and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to help locate missing youth statewide.
The broader numbers underscore how common these cases are across the state. Local law enforcement communications in Knox County report that nearly 400 individuals go missing across Tennessee each year, and state records under the Interstate Compact for Juveniles show the number of runaway youth returned to and from Tennessee dropped 21 percent in Fiscal Year 2023 compared with the previous year. Crenshaw-Kyle's case joins a string of recent Knoxville-area disappearances, including a Knoxville teen reported missing again earlier this month, as authorities continue to lean on public tips to track down teens believed to be staying with acquaintances rather than in danger from a stranger.
