A search has been launched for a 16-year-old Indian student, Harman Singh, who failed to return home.
A search has been launched for a 16-year-old Indian student, Harman Singh, who failed to return home on Saturday to the American family he was living with at Edgeley, LaMoure County, in North Dakota.
The LaMoure County sheriff department told DNA that Singh was last seen walking away from Edgeley School on Saturday night after returning on a school bus from a track-and-field meet in Jamestown.
Officers are investigating the possibility of Singh, who came to the US through the Academic Year in America student exchange programme, having run away from his hosts, Jason and Collette Mathern. The 16-year-old may have pulled the stunt to avoid returning to India at the end of the US school year in June.
Singh arrived last September to stay with the farming couple and their four children in sparsely-populated North Dakota.
Collette Mathern said apart from a few clashes with the two oldest boys, who were younger than Singh, there were no problems. “He was very appreciative of his stay here,” she told the US media. “He was just like our own child. He loved us — so we thought. He just totally blindsided us.”
The sheriff department scanned local airports and said Singh had not hopped onto a plane. The teen did call his hostess, Collette, on Sunday to say he appreciated everything the Matherns had done for him and that he was heading for Canada.
Statistics on what happens to young people, mostly in the 15 to 17 years age group, who run away are disturbing.
According to experts, teens who have been away for a week or more have a nearly 44% chance of being hurt while on the run. There are 1 million to 3 million runaway children living on the streets in the US.
WDAY News reported on Thursday that Singh had contacted his sister in India and told her that he had run away because he did not want to return home. He did not reveal where he was staying.
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