A 17-year-old Port Richey teenager was last seen walking near Ridge Crest Drive at around 3:20 a.m. Friday, wearing a black shirt and black pants, before vanishing without a trace. Tristen Coleman stands 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighs around 120 pounds, and has brown hair and brown eyes. Pasco Sheriff's deputies are now asking the public for help locating the teen, who is classified as missing or a possible runaway.
According to the Pasco Sheriff's Office, Coleman was last seen in the Ridge Crest Drive area of Port Richey, a residential stretch in western Pasco County near the U.S. Route 19 commercial corridor, located roughly three miles from the Pasco County Communications Center in New Port Richey. Anyone with information is asked to submit tips online at pascosheriff.com/tips or call the sheriff's non-emergency line at 727-847-8102, option 7.
Why Deputies Moved Fast Overnight
Florida law leaves no room for delay in cases like this. Florida Statute § 937.021 bars law enforcement agencies from imposing any waiting period before accepting a missing child report, and it requires case details to be entered into state and national missing person databases within two hours. That means Coleman's case was almost certainly logged into the FCIC/NCIC system well before sunrise, regardless of whether investigators ultimately determine the teen ran away or is otherwise missing.
Notably absent from the response is a statewide AMBER Alert or Missing Child Alert. Florida Department of Law Enforcement guidelines reserve those broadcasts for cases where investigators have evidence of a kidnapping or believe the minor faces imminent danger of death or serious injury. Runaway cases, even urgent ones, typically don't meet that threshold, which is why the sheriff's office is instead relying on a public Facebook bulletin and its tip line to generate leads.
A Pattern Across Western Pasco County
Coleman's disappearance is the latest in a string of missing-teen cases the Pasco Sheriff's Office has publicized in recent weeks across the county's 747-square-mile jurisdiction, which serves more than 674,000 residents. Missing person calls rank among the most frequent and highest-priority calls for service the agency handles, a workload that has included recent searches for teens in Holiday, Wesley Chapel, New Port Richey, and Land O' Lakes over the past month.
The sheriff's office also disabled public comments on its missing-person social media posts back in 2022, a policy meant to prevent time-sensitive tips from getting buried in comment threads and to funnel information directly to dispatchers instead. Deputies can draw on a federally certified Missing and Abducted Child Team, developed through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's Missing Kids Readiness Program, which gives investigators access to specialized detectives, intelligence analysts, K-9 units, and aerial drones for active juvenile searches.
National Numbers Offer Some Reassurance
Data compiled by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children shows that endangered runaways made up 92% of the 32,167 missing child cases the organization supported nationally in 2025, with law enforcement and community efforts achieving a 90% overall recovery rate. Florida itself logged more than 29,000 missing children reports in state databases in 2023, placing it among the highest-volume states for these cases alongside California and Texas.
The Ridge Crest Drive area has seen at least one prior missing-person search: in June 2023, deputies issued a public bulletin for a 33-year-old man reported missing in the 6400 block, who was located safely shortly afterward. It is unknown whether that earlier case has any connection to Coleman's disappearance, and no such link has been suggested by investigators.
The Legal Risk of Harboring a Runaway
Should Coleman's case prove to be a runaway situation, Florida law carries steep consequences for any adult who might shelter the teen. Florida Statute § 984.085 makes it illegal for an unauthorized adult to knowingly shelter or assist an unmarried minor runaway for more than 24 hours without parental consent or notifying law enforcement. Florida lawmakers raised that offense from a first-degree misdemeanor to a third-degree felony effective October 1, 2025, a change intended to deter third parties from hiding missing minors from their families and from investigators.
Deputies have not released additional details about the circumstances surrounding Coleman's disappearance. Anyone who may have seen the teen near Ridge Crest Drive before or after 3:20 a.m. Friday is urged to contact the Pasco Sheriff's Office through its tip line or non-emergency phone number.
