A 14-year-old boy who vanished from his Pierce Township home in the middle of the night was found safe early Monday, hours after the vehicle he was believed to be riding in was discovered wrecked and empty against a guardrail on a rural stretch of road near the Ohio River. Carter Busch left his residence at 1:35 a.m., and by 2:14 a.m. the crashed vehicle had already been located near Old State Route 52 and State Route 749, according to a Pierce Township Police Department release relayed by A Voice For The Voiceless.
That narrow 39-minute window between Busch leaving home and the crash being found set off an urgent overnight search. As WKRC reported, police initially said they did not know whether Busch had been hurt when the vehicle was found unoccupied, but the outlet later updated its report to note that officers had since located the teen and confirmed he was fine. While the search was active, Pierce Township police released a physical description of Busch as 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighing 150 pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and asked that tips be directed to Detective Chesney, per the same account from A Voice For The Voiceless.
Ohio's Minimum Driving Age
Busch's age raises an unresolved question about how the vehicle ended up on the road in the first place. Under Ohio's Graduated Driver Licensing system, a 14-year-old cannot legally operate a motor vehicle or even hold a permit — state law requires a minor to be at least 15 years and 6 months old before obtaining a Temporary Instruction Permit Identification Card, according to Dyer, Garofalo, Mann & Schultz.
Ohio law enforcement has procedures for missing-minor cases that fall short of an abduction. Under Ohio Department of Public Safety procedures, agencies can request an Endangered Missing Child Advisory when a child under 18 is believed to be in danger but the case doesn't meet the strict criteria for a statewide AMBER Alert, which requires evidence of an abduction, per policy documents hosted by PowerDMS. Busch was found safe after a local search while officers worked to determine whether he had been hurt.
The crash site was near Old State Route 52 and State Route 749. Pierce Township itself is a suburban community of roughly 15,965 residents spread across about 23 square miles in southwestern Clermont County along the river, per World Population Review.
Emergency dispatching for Pierce Township and neighboring communities runs through the Clermont County Communications Center in Batavia, which fields both 911 calls and non-emergency police dispatch requests. The center's coordination role underscores how quickly local agencies were able to mobilize once the crash was reported.
A Department Recently Stripped of Camera Coverage
The search also comes weeks after Pierce Township's Board of Trustees voted unanimously to terminate its $30,000 annual contract with Flock Safety and dismantle the ten automated license-plate reading cameras township police had been using, as Hoodline previously reported. That means officers searching for Busch and the crashed vehicle were working without the automated camera network the department had relied on in the past, though it is not known whether the cameras would have factored into this particular search.
Details that remain unknown include whether anyone was injured in the crash, who was driving the vehicle at the time of impact, and how the vehicle came to be in a 14-year-old's possession. Pierce Township police have not released further information beyond confirming that Busch was found safe.
