When 16-year-old Asata Amun ran away from her Ga. home with no shoes on, her father thought she was just going to visit a friend after they got into a heated dispute. Amun’s father, Kwabena Amun, said in an interview he threatened to send the teenager to military school if she kept getting in trouble in school, which prompted her to run. “So you are just going to run like a coward? Asata,” Kwabena said that night, according to WSB-TV.
That was over 13 months ago on Feb. 1. Since then, the teen hadn’t contacted her family, which began to raise concerns about her safety and the relationship she had with her family, police said. As the investigation into her disappearance continued, Children’s Protective Services even removed Amun’s two sisters from the family home when Kwabena was accused of physically abusing them, according to WSB-TV.
The father has since denied the allegations against him. “I just want to make sure my baby girl is OK. That she is alright,” Kwabena told WSB-TV. “I just want to make sure that wherever she is, she’s OK. You know, she’s alive.”
Amun’s mother, Dominique, eventually spoke out saying, “I feel like it’s not common not to hear something at all.” She continued, “She knows my number. She could have sent me a message.” News of Amun’s disappearance flooded the Gwinnett County community, as all eyes were focused on locating the young girl for months.
But it wasn’t until the Gwinnett County Police investigation went stale that they would catch a break. On Monday (March 17), police said in a statement Amun “has been in the custody of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services since February 2024 under an alias.” The statement continued saying, “a Tennessee Department of Children’s Services case manager identified inconsistencies in Asata Amun’s statements.”
Dominique told WSB, “She was in Atlanta when she left and she slept in the street until someone kind of helped her and got her on a bus to go where she needed to go to feel safe.”
After further research into the teen’s story, the case manager ended up contacting the Gwinnett County Police Department, which led to her discovery. Now that she’s been found, police said “arrangements have been made to transfer custody of Asata Amun to the Georgia Department of Family & Children Services. The investigation into her disappearance remains active.”
“I dropped the phone when I heard it,” Amun’s mother continued to WSB after her daughter was found. “I couldn’t believe it.”