FAYETTE COUNTY, Tenn. — Deputies in Fayette County continued looking for three teens Monday after they escaped Wilder Youth Development Center on Saturday.
The Sheriff’s department believes at least one, if not all, of the missing teens are in a stolen Jeep Grand Cherokee. This information is based on a license plate recognition device.
Chief Deputy Ray Garcia said they have reason to believe the boys are heading to Nashville but cannot be 100 percent sure that all, or even any, of the individuals are actually in that vehicle because they don’t have images of the teens inside the jeep.
“The way [it] works — you don’t see inside the vehicle,” Garcia said. “You get a picture of the vehicle — after it passes the camera — and a tag, so, we don’t know if they split up that night and went different directions, [or] if all three were in the vehicle. We still can’t say with 100 percent certainty that they were the ones that stole that vehicle. However, logic leads us to believe that they most likely were responsible for that.”
Chief Deputy Garcia was able to confirm all of the teens are from middle or east Tennessee with one being from Clarksville, one from the Nashville area and one from Chattanooga.
“When we went back and looked at what was in their history and why they were there at the facility, they were there for charges such as aggravated assault, aggravated robbery and all of them did have flags that indicated that they had violent tendencies,” Garcia said.
Garcia said one of the biggest issues he believed leads to teens frequently running away is the lack of structure the facility has for violent offenders.
“We’ve had escapes that have gone on out there for a while now, and we know one of the biggest issues is that facility was never built to house what it’s housing today,” Garcia said. “It was built years ago to deal with dependent and neglect children — to deal with low, low-level offenses and now they are housing the most violent of the violent offenders there, and it’s just not physically built for that.”
The lack of structure made it’s way to the public back in 2019 when multiple teenagers escaped on separate occasions, putting those who live nearby on high alert.
“From 2019 to now we are at least at 15 to 16 escapes that have happened and there have been numerous other escape attempts where they may have escaped their dorms but remained there on grounds within the fenced-in areas.”
The three boys are still on the run, but it’s believed they crossed into Shelby County and are potentially on their way to Nashville.
Investigators aren't releasing any information about who they are, but the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department says it's using every resource available to find them.
"We actually have members of our department who are tied in with the U.S. Marshalls task force and we tap on or law enforcement partners to help us out, and we get the U.S. Marshalls involved, and they’ve been very good at trying to backtrack who are their friends, who are their family and where are they going to be going," Garcia said. "They will start working with us, and it gives us a way to [see if they are] still in the state or whether they’ve traveled out of state.”
ABC24 has reached out to the state's department of children's services for comment to those concerns but didn't hear back.
If you have any information on the teens whereabouts, call the Fayette County Sheriff's Office at (901) 465 3456.