Search party for missing New Jersey teen Jashyah Moore set, reward increases

ABC News

(EAST ORANGE, N.J.) -- As the search for 14-year-old Jashyah Moore continues, investigators are offering an increased reward of $15,000 after an anonymous local business owner's donation.

The Moore family planned to hold a search party at 5 p.m. Tuesday on the corner of Amherst Street and Central Avenue, East Orange, New Jersey, Mayor Ted Green said at a Tuesday press conference. There will also be an interfaith prayer vigil at 5:30 p.m. on Friday in front of City Hall.

"Jashyah is one of our own," Green said. "We're asking this community, as we have been asking from day one, to help us in locating this young lady."

Jashyah has been missing since Oct. 14 and her family is pleading with the community to help bring her daughter home.

She was last seen around 10 a.m. at Poppie's Deli Store in East Orange after her mother asked her to go to the store for groceries. According to police, surveillance footage shows Jashyah entering the store with an older male who paid for her items. However, the footage does not appear to show them leaving the store together, police say.

When she returned home to her mother, Moore said Jashyah had lost the card the family uses for groceries, and Moore told her daughter to retrace her steps to find it.

Moore said that was the last time she saw her daughter.

Jashyah is 5-foot 5-inches tall and weighs about 135 pounds. She was last seen wearing khaki pants, a black jacket and black boots, according to an East Orange City Hall press release.

"I cannot imagine what she might be going through just being away from us this long, being away from her family who loves her very much," her mother, Jamie Moore, said through tears at a press conference Friday morning. "If anybody knows anything, please, please come forward."

East Orange Police, the FBI, and the New Jersey State Police are working in collaboration to help find Jashyah. They say if anyone sees her or knows of her whereabouts, to call the East Orange Police at 973-266-5041.

Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 6:54AM by Kiara Alfonseca, ABC News Permalink