MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) – A Goffstown teenager last seen heading to school in March was found Monday working at a restaurant in Florida.
Laura Mackenzie, 18, was taken into custody in St. Augustine, Fla., on an outstanding warrant for shoplifting, WMUR-TV in Manchester reported.
Investigators said they were tipped Monday morning to Mackenzie’s location. Police there found her vehicle and then her.
Mackenzie’s mother, Enid, said she is still trying to reach her son in Iraq to let him know Laura has been found and is OK. She said she was getting ready for work when she got the call she had been waiting for for five months and “screamed for joy.”
Mackenzie was reported missing after she left for Goffstown High School on March 8. She was due in court that day on the shoplifting charge and police said she might have run away.
Her family and friends set up a Web site, findlaura.org, to help locate her.
“We just hope she’s safe and that no one is keeping her against her will and that she’s able to call home,” her mother Enid said at the time.
Her father, Bill, said Laura was a senior and an honor student at Goffstown High. The couple said in March her grandmother had died recently and she was upset that a brother was scheduled to go to Iraq.
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Information from: WMUR-TV, http://wmur.com and WKXL.
AP-ES-08-07-06 1804EDT
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