Two teenage girls who went missing from the same North Carolina county used school-issued laptops to communicate with their alleged abductors.
Savannah Grace Childress vanished on February 11 from her home on Canaan Church Road in Denton. The 14-year-old was found alive ten days later in Arkansas.
Law enforcement officers investigating Childress' disappearance discovered that the teen had been using a computer given to her by Davidson County Schools to chat with multiple people on various online platforms.
The Alamance County Sheriff's Office determined that one of the people Childress was in contact with—38-year-old William Ice, of Mercer County, Pennsylvania—had also been in communication with other girls in Alamance County.
Believing that Ice took Childress from her home, the Davidson County Sheriff's Office obtained warrants for his arrest on charges of first-degree kidnapping and soliciting a child by computer.
A multi-agency law enforcement operation tracked Ice to a McDonalds in Lonoke County, Arkansas, where officers found him seated with Childress in a red Durango. When ordered to exit the vehicle, Ice shot at officers before getting back into the car and fleeing.
State troopers gave chase, and the vehicle eventually hit a snowbank. While Childress exited the vehicle, Ice remained inside and turned his gun on himself. He died at Little Rock Hospital on February 21.
On February 16, 15-year-old Kayla Carlson vanished from the American Children’s Home in Lexington. Detectives with the Criminal Investigations Division discovered that Carlson had been picked up by 36-year-old Christopher Steele Boles, of Moore County.
Carlson met Boles in an online chatroom that she had accessed using her school-issued laptop. Six days after being reported missing, the teen was found in a motel in Aberdeen, Moore County.
Boles was arrested and charged with one count of abduction of children and one count of first-degree kidnapping and scheduled to appear in Lexington District Court on March 29.
He was further charged with one count of possession of heroin, one count of possession of marijuana, and one count of possession of drug paraphernalia, for which he is scheduled to appear in Moore County District Court on April 5.