CHARLESTON, SC — An 11-year-old South Carolina boy has been reunited with his family after he took his brother’s car and drove more than 200 miles by himself to live with a stranger he’d met on the social media app Snapchat, police in Charleston said.
The boy left his home in Simpsonville late Sunday night and drove three hours to Charleston, where the stranger lived, relying on the GPS signal in his father’s Insignia tablet to guide him, according to a police report. The signal dropped and because Snapchat messages disappear he couldn’t recover the address of his destination.
In likely his best decision of the night, he saw Charleston police officer Christopher Braun and pulled over to ask for help. Braun called the boy’s father around 12:30 a.m. Monday, who was already in the process of reporting his son was missing, the report said.
The age of the person the boy was chatting with and the reasons he may have wanted to go live with the stranger are unknown. Authorities took possession of the Insignia tablet for analysis. The South Carolina Attorney General’s Office also is investigating.
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Police in Charleston and the boy’s hometown of Simpsonville say the incident illustrates what a dangerous place the internet and social media can be for children.
“You have somebody who’s chatting with an 11-year-old about traveling so we’re very cautious about wanting to make sure children are safe on the internet,” Simpsonville Police Department investigator James Donnelly told news station WYFF.
In an interview with news station WCIV, Charleston Police Chief Luther T. Reynolds said he “would love tonight, right now, anybody who’s watching this, who is a parent of a child, especially an 11-year-old, to sit down with your 11-year-old, right now, right this moment and have a conversation about what you’re doing on social media.”
That conversation should include “the dangers, the benefits, and the things that as a parent we need to talk about every day.”
Snapchat offers tips to parents that will help them monitor and protect their children when they’re using social media.