A 6-year-old girl who went missing in North Knoxville has been found safe, according to police. Chloe Richards had last been seen in the 4000 block of Peaks Landing Way before officers launched a search and appealed to the public for help finding her.
The update came Tuesday morning in a post from the Knoxville Police Department, which confirmed simply that Chloe had been located and was safe. Before that news broke, KPD officers had been actively searching for the girl and asked residents to watch for a child wearing a white t-shirt with two cats on it, black leggings, and her hair pulled into a ponytail. Anyone with information had been asked to call 911.
The 4000 block of Peaks Landing Way, where Chloe was last seen, sits within The Peaks of Knoxville, a 76-unit income-restricted apartment community built in 2002 that offers two- to four-bedroom units in North Knoxville, according to Apartments.com.
How Knoxville Police Handle Missing Child Cases
Investigations into missing juveniles and endangered youth in Knoxville fall to the Knoxville Police Department's Special Crimes Unit, which coordinates with state agencies once alert thresholds are met, per the City of Knoxville. Emergency reports in the city run through Knox County E-911, which accepts both standard voice calls and text-to-911 messages for people who cannot safely speak, the city notes.
Cases involving very young children tend to draw immediate, high-priority responses from law enforcement. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reports that while 92% of missing child cases nationally involve older runaways, reports involving children under age 10 prompt urgent police deployment because of the heightened risk of accidental injury or harm to such young kids. NCMEC says it supported 32,167 missing child cases in 2025, resolving 29,013 of them for a 90% overall recovery rate.
State Alerts and the Legal Line on Supervision
Tennessee recorded 50 Endangered Child Alerts and seven AMBER Alerts statewide in 2024, according to data from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Endangered Child Alerts are used when a missing child does not meet the full abduction criteria required for an AMBER Alert but is still considered to be in danger.
Tennessee law draws distinctions around how young children can be left unsupervised. Under Tennessee Code Annotated § 55-10-803, leaving a child under age 7 unattended in a vehicle is a misdemeanor, and state judicial guidelines separately advise that children under 10 should not be left alone at home, per Justia. Under a different statute, Tennessee Code Annotated § 39-15-401, child neglect or abuse involving a child age 6 or younger is elevated to a Class D felony, a stricter classification than what applies to cases involving older children, according to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.
Lawmakers have also been debating where the line between neglect and normal childhood independence should fall. During the 2025–2026 legislative session, Tennessee introduced Senate Bill 1259, which sought to clarify that child neglect laws should not penalize parents who let mature children play outdoors or remain briefly unattended, according to BillTrack50.
Hoodline has not previously reported on Chloe Richards' case specifically, though the outlet covered a missing Knoxville teen search in December and reported this week on a missing Decatur teen believed to be in Tennessee. No further details on how or where Chloe was located have been released.
