A 13-year-old boy has been missing for over a month after he was last seen at an Arizona car wash with his mom.
Elijah Gumbus vanished without a trace at around 7am on August 31 when he and his mother stopped off at a Weiss Guys Express Wash in Tolleson, Arizona, while they were traveling from California to Louisiana for her work, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said on Tuesday.
Surveillance footage from the car wash, obtained by USA Today, shows his mom stopping at the car wash to clean out her car.
Elijah – dressed in a red shirt and white trainers – is then seen jumping out of his mom’s car and running off in the direction of the highway. He has not been seen since.
Tolleson Police said that the boy’s mom claims to have seen her son jumping into a stranger’s maroon SUV – but law enforcement officials have not been able to verify this claim, 12News reported.
Now, one month on, authorities are asking for the public’s help in finding the missing teen.
Investigators believe the 13-year-old could still be in Arizona or may have ventured to California, Louisiana, Nevada, or Illinois, the center said.
Neither Elijah or his mom have any known ties to Arizona. Elijah’s parents have a history of custody issues but neither live in Arizona – and police have confirmed that the teen is not with either of them.
Tolleson Police Lt Lee Garrett told 12News that authorities are trying to determine whether he “just simply ran away.”
“There’s a lot of areas there that he could have either met with somebody or taken off or hid or something like that, but at the moment, that’s the only information that we had and the only surveillance that we had in the area that was able to pick him up in a direction of travel,” he said.
“He’s not a very big kid, so he’s somebody that would stand out. He’s got a very young face.
“So we’re hoping that somebody will see this and realize that if he’s on the streets, or if he’s with somebody he shouldn’t then they will call 911 immediately.”
Elijah is described as being 5ft 5 inches tall, weighs 130 pounds and has brown eyes and black hair, reported KTLA5.
Anyone with information about the teen is urged to contact NCMEC at 1-800-THE-LOST or Tolleson Police Department at 1-623-936-7186.
