Missing Morgan Hill Teen Found In San Jose

MORGAN HILL (CBS SF) – Police in Morgan Hill announced that an 18-year-old woman who went missing last week has been found, authorities said.

Police tweeted shortly after 10 a.m. Friday morning that Desirae Akins-Qualls had been located in San Jose.

Morgan Hill police did not offer any additional details about the teen being found.

Police said Akins-Qualls had left her home at around 7:30 a.m. on May 4. She walked to the bus stop on Monterey Road at Vineyard Boulevard, where she was going to board a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority bus headed to her school in San Jose, police said Thursday morning.

Akins-Qualls never reached her school and was not seen until she was found in San Jose.

The bus stop is one block away from a Safeway store on Tennant Avenue, one of two Safeway stores where Antolin Garcia-Torres, 26, was convicted on Tuesday of attempting to kidnap three women as they climbed into their cars in 2009.

Garcia-Torres was also convicted of the 2012 kidnap and murder of 15-year-old Sierra LaMar as she walked to her school bus stop, about 7 miles away off of Old Monterey Road in the nearby community of Perry.

"We're not making any assertion that there's any connection or any real similarities at this point," Morgan Hill police Sgt. Carson Thomas said of the two cases, noting that Akins-Qualls has run away from home before, but has always called home within a day or two.

The teen has a history of depression but had not made any suicidal threats and did not seem upset when she left home, police said. Authorities noted they had no leads on Akins-Qualls' whereabouts, but said she might be in San Jose.

Anyone with information about the case has been asked to call Morgan Hill police Detective Greg Dini at (669) 253-4965 or the anonymous tip line at (408) 947-7867.

© Copyright 2017 by CBS San Francisco and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

In:
• Missing Teen