Back in May 2024, the family of a 14-year-old Sacramento girl was in a panic after her sudden disappearance. Authorities confirmed the girl has been found and safe. However, preliminary investigation findings reveal disturbing information regarding her vanishing.
Local activist Berry Accius tells KCRA he led the movement toward finding the girl once she disappeared. When she first vanished, the state’s Ebony Alert system for missing Black children and girls didn’t pick up her profile to report her as missing. The girl’s mother accused the police at the time of not taking the child’s disappearance seriously, per FOX 40.
“I was told that she didn’t fit the criteria, but when you look at the criteria based on her age alone, she did,” Accius told reporters at KCRA.
It took another two months for the California Highway Patrol to issue an Ebony Alert, the first to come out of Sacramento County. However, on April 10, they finally got their big tip that led them to the girl... all the way in Texas.
Deputies in Houston responded to the report of a suspicious person on the 100 block of Cold Snow Drive, per FOX’s report. Officers say the caller reported a male and female inside his vacant residents. Upon arrival, the two tried to flee but were detained.
They then identified the female as the missing Sacramento girl, who is now 15. However, the male was identified as a man almost twice her age, 28-year-old Tarik Exavier Jammer. The investigation so far into the girl’s disappearance revealed the two met through an online video game, per Harris County Constable Precinct 4.
Police now accuse Jammer of convincing the girl to run away with him. Deputies claim the two formed a “sexual/dating” relationship despite state law ruling 14 years old to be under the age of consent. By California law, this is considered rape.
“Had anyone even cared, this whole thing would’ve been resolved months ago,” Accius told reporters. “If it was not for some good neighbors who thought it was strange for folks to be living inside an abandoned home (she) would still be gone!”
The advocate has a point. Had she been a white girl, police may have moved quicker. Consider the fact that around the same time the girl was found, a white 10-year-old girl went missing in Southern California, per FOX’s report. She was found hours after police reported her missing - also with a man police believe she met through a video game. Meanwhile, the Sacramento teen’s search took an entire year.
Jammer was arrested and booked into Harris County Jail for sexual performance of a child but may face more charges as the investigation continues, the reports say. Police say the teen was transferred to a facility to be reunited with her parents.