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Breaking News

Chinese Youth Missing in San Francisco Area

Aired August 02, 2002 - 12:10   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Here is the case right now. We actually just got a picture in of the 12-year-old girl that is missing right now from the San Francisco International Airport. Here she is. Not sure if I'm saying her name right, it is spelled Y-U-K-U-N Yukun Gia, G-I-A is the last name. She is a 12-year-old girl from China. Police are combing the San Francisco International Airport right now, we are told this young gal became separated from a youth tour group that was spending Thursday in San Francisco before heading to Space Camp in Alabama. Police say the tour group, made up of 28 young people from Beijing and their adult guides, landed at San Francisco International Airport about 2:00 p.m. on Thursday. The group made it through customs and went to wait for a bus, and we just heard from police not long ago. Here's what they had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY RATTI, SAN FRANCISCO POLICE: OK, this flight arrived with the youth group from Beijing, and there was approximately 27 teenagers in the group. They come through customs, cleared customs about 2:10 yesterday afternoon. The adults with the group took them directly out to a bus, took their passports from them, put them on the bus, and traveled to Stanford University to do a tour of the campus. Approximately 5:00, they did a count as they put the group back on the bus, they realized that this teenager was missing.

QUESTION: The teenager is 12?

RATTI: She is 12. She will be 13 in November.

QUESTION: Just making sure.

QUESTION: Boy, kind of puts you at -- in a difficult situation to start this sort of search at that late hour. You lost time, not a lot of details, how frustrating is that?

QUESTION: How frustrating -- yes.

RATTI: That's one of the problems, that there was such a delay in them reporting this person missing. The other problem is it's hard to pinpoint is she missing from here, or is she missing from Stanford, so we have put out a countywide alert, and we have notified all the law enforcement agencies up and down the peninsula as far as Stanford, the CHP, everybody to be on the lookout for her. And we are just trying to cover all our bases. QUESTION: In terms of the other students, do you know anything about how...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: As you just heard, the police officer from San Francisco say there, the public affairs officer, he mentioned Stanford University, where we're told that no head count was taken before the bus departed for an hour-long tour of the Stanford University campus just south of the airport. A head count was taken as the bus was departing Stanford about 4:00 p.m., and the girl was not found at that time.

Once again, here is a picture of her. Police are looking for a 12- year-old young girl from China. She is described as wearing a white Space Camp T-shirt and white pants with a blue stripe. Authorities also say she speaks very little English. Yukun Gia is the 12-year-old's name, police now searching for this young girl in San Francisco area.

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