Location: West Virginia. My adult stepson (20) was at college this spring semester and unbeknownst to us withdrew from all his classes. We didn’t find out until he was a no show at my wife’s birthday party on July 2, when he started making some unlikely excuses as to why he didn’t come. He has a car I own and insure, and I need to renew the registration. I asked him to provide information and he made more excuses about not being able to see me. He failed to show on a following day, and he then gave us another day he’d come home (tomorrow). We’ve received no communication from him in more than a week despite repeated attempts to reach him. We’re very worried about him, as he has depression and autism. The last address we had for him was his dorm, but school is on break for the summer, so we don’t have a current address, so no possibility of a wellness check.
Summary, we can’t find him, he has my car and at this point I don’t feel comfortable with him continuing to have it (potential danger to himself or others?), and is potentially in a mental health crisis. No history of drug abuse, no criminal record. Was a straigh A student. What are my options? We’re thinking about going up to his college town tomorrow to potentially file a missing person report. Thank you!
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I agree. Tomorrow go to the town he was last in and file a missing persons report. It’s unclear how much they’ll be able to look into it as he is an adult and sometimes people just want to get away and start fresh.
Report the car stolen. I’m fairly certain that you’ll find him very quickly.
I’m guessing he hasn’t shared his phone’s location with you and you don’t have access to any sort of GPS locator for the car or anything else he could have with him, such as an airtag.
Have you spoken with anyone at his school? I mean… presumably, he’s been driving around wherever he is with all of the stuff from his dorm room packed into his car? Or he found somewhere to unload it… I would just wonder if anyone could tell you anything about when he left/moved out, under what circumstances, etc.
Do you know names/contact information for any of his friends?
Otherwise, your only option may be to call police and report him missing, and/or report the car stolen. Hopefully, if you go that route, you could choose to drop the charges once he’s found, but IANAL, so in all honesty, maybe I shouldn’t be giving advice in this sub, and you should definitely take what I say with a very large grain of salt.
Other than that… maybe hire a private investigator?