Portsmouth police are asking for the public’s help finding a 12-year-old girl who has been missing since Thursday morning, according to the Portsmouth Police Department, as reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian.
J’Harmony Price was last seen around 8 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 29, in the 1300 block of Waller Street in Portsmouth, according to the Portsmouth Police Department, as reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian. Police describe her as 5 feet 1 inch tall and about 115 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes.
Police have listed the case as a missing and runaway juvenile, the Scioto Valley Guardian reported. Anyone with information on Price’s location is asked to contact Detective Pistole at the Portsmouth Police Department at (740) 353-4101 or (740) 354-1600, according to the department.
The 1300 block of Waller Street sits in Portsmouth’s west end, a residential area not far from Calvary Baptist Church and the city’s Earl Thomas Conley Riverfront Park, the Scioto Valley Guardian reported. The department, headquartered on Findlay Street, is the primary law enforcement agency for Portsmouth, the Scioto County seat of roughly 20,000 people along the Ohio River.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know: Price was last seen Thursday morning on Waller Street, her physical description has been released by police, and detectives are actively asking the public for information, according to the Portsmouth Police Department via the Scioto Valley Guardian. What we are still waiting on: any update from police on where she may be headed, whether she has been in contact with anyone, and whether the department issues a wider alert — none of that had been announced in the department’s information as reported Friday.
Police appeals like this one depend on quick, specific tips: a sighting with a time and a place, a direction of travel, or word from anyone Price may have contacted since Thursday morning. Residents in the west end and across Portsmouth can help by checking their own doorbell and security camera footage from Thursday morning onward and calling detectives rather than posting unverified sightings online, where outdated shares can outrun the facts.
The appeal comes during a stretch of similar public-safety work across Southeast Ohio. NewsForce247 has covered the Athens County Sheriff’s Office asking for help finding a man indicted in an infant’s death, and, in Price’s own community, the U.S. Energy Department’s new contract for the Portsmouth Site near Piketon — a reminder of how much of Scioto County life runs through the same small set of local institutions now asking for the public’s help.
Portsmouth police have made similar appeals in recent weeks for other missing juveniles in the city, each time asking residents to call the same detective lines — (740) 353-4101 or (740) 354-1600 — rather than approaching a young person themselves, according to the department’s information reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian in those cases.
The timeline, as police have released it, is short and specific: Price was last seen at about 8 a.m. Thursday on Waller Street, and the department’s public appeal followed on Friday, Oct. 30, as reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian. That gap is exactly why the first tips matter most — memories of a Thursday-morning sighting fade quickly, and camera systems across the city routinely overwrite footage within days, so a resident who waits until next week to check a recording may find it gone.
Price’s family and police share the same immediate goal: a confirmed, safe location. A tip does not need to be certain to be worth the call — detectives would rather check a possible sighting than never hear about a real one, and callers can reach the department at either number above at any hour.
Anyone sharing the appeal online can help most by sharing the police description and the detective phone numbers with it, and by removing or updating their post once police announce an outcome — a step that keeps a resolved case from pulling attention and tips away from the next family waiting for the same call.
What happens next is in the public’s hands as much as the department’s: officers follow up on tips as they come in, and police will announce when Price is located. NewsForce247 will update this story as soon as the Portsmouth Police Department confirms a development — and readers who shared the appeal should watch for that update so an old alert does not keep circulating after she is found.
Photo: Vasiliymeshko, CC BY