Deputies in Iredell County are racing to find 4-year-old Charlotte Raelynn Burke, who vanished Monday afternoon from her home in Stony Point. She was last seen around 4:15 p.m. in the Blanche Lane area, and as of Monday evening, searchers had not located her.
The Iredell County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the search in a report shared by WSOC-TV, which first detailed the timeline of Charlotte’s disappearance from her family’s Blanche Lane area home. According to the station’s report, deputies have pinpointed the mid-afternoon window as the last confirmed sighting of the child.
North Carolina law does not require families to wait before reporting a missing person. Once a report is received, law enforcement must arrange for the person’s information to be entered into the national missing-persons file, notify on-duty officers and issue a statewide lookout to appropriate agencies; for qualifying missing-child reports, the law also calls for notice to the state center and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. North Carolina’s missing-persons statute lays out those steps.
Heavy Presence of Deputies, K-9 Teams and Drones
Search crews have not let up since Monday afternoon. Per the same account, deputies, K-9 units and drone teams have established a heavy presence in the Blanche Lane area as the search continues.
That kind of multi-unit response — canine teams working the ground alongside aerial drone coverage — reflects the urgency authorities are placing on locating Charlotte quickly. The station’s report does not indicate how long search operations are expected to continue.
What Charlotte Was Wearing
Authorities have released a detailed physical description to help the public identify the missing girl. Charlotte has shoulder-length, curly, sandy blonde hair, and she was last seen wearing a light blue shirt with a heart featuring Spider-Man, along with gray shorts and Crocs, the article notes.
A missing-child search does not automatically trigger an AMBER Alert. North Carolina’s statute requires the child to be 17 or younger and believed abducted and in danger of injury or death; the child cannot be a runaway or voluntarily missing, and law enforcement must investigate the abduction. The alert system is intended for cases meeting those conditions, so the existence of a local search alone does not establish whether a case qualifies. State law specifies the AMBER Alert criteria.
The Iredell County Sheriff’s Office has asked anyone with information about Charlotte’s whereabouts, or anyone who may have seen her, to call 911 immediately. Residents in and around Stony Point are being urged to stay alert as search efforts in the Blanche Lane area continue into the evening.
