Two teenage girls who were reported missing from their Texada Island residence Monday morning, September 30, have been located and are safe.
“I’m so relieved and happy to talk to them this morning,” said Sara Valentine, the girls’ sister, on Tuesday, October 1.
The 15-year-old, twin sisters Maranda and Samantha Chesney were reported missing by Valentine early Monday. The girls are from a small town north of Red Deer, Alberta, and had been relocated to Texada by their mother who was worried they had fallen into the wrong crowd. They had been living with Valentine for only a few weeks.
The search for the teens on Texada expanded quickly over the morning with the help of the social media website Facebook to include both community members and the RCMP.
Sandi Bronson Akre, Valentine’s friend, first posted a message to a Texada message board on the social media website at about 6 am to alert the community that the girls were missing. By noon, Valentine was convinced the girls had been spotted with an older man in Powell River near the Westview ferry terminal.
Although the man’s description was inaccurate, the description of the young girls fit the sisters. The man the sisters were seen with was a young friend of the girls who had travelled to Texada to collect the girls and take them back to Alberta. He had been told by the girls that they “had been ditched by friends,” according to Valentine.
They planned to take the last ferry from Texada back to Powell River on Sunday night, but the storm cancelled that run and forced them to say at a hotel on the island.
“Just through people on Texada talking and the police looking into things, I was told there was a vehicle [at the hotel] with Alberta plates and two young girls that fit the description,” said Valentine.
She phoned her family in Alberta to tell them she knew the man’s name, and they confirmed he was a friend.
When the girls phoned home to tell their mother that they were all right, the young man was told the truth that the sisters had not been left on Texada by friends, but instead taken there to live with their sister.
Valentine said the man left the girls in North Vancouver with the RCMP.
She spoke with the girls Tuesday morning and arranged transportation to bring them back to Texada.
She said the girls do want to come back and that they “obviously need to have a talk about what happened.”
