Missing Florida teen found safe days after vanishing, mom says
Tristan Constable, 15, was found safe Monday afternoon after vanishing Friday
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A missing 15-year-old Florida Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps member has made contact with authorities and is safe after vanishing over the weekend on the way home from his Tampa school, according to his mom.
Tristan Constable, a student at Tampa Bay Tech, was still in touch with friends over social media throughout the weekend, his mother, Leslie Phillips, told Fox News Digital, but he was not answering his family and hadn't returned home as of Monday morning. Just after noon, she said, she received a message from authorities that he had made contact with them and is safe.
He asked to return to her house in North Carolina, where he hasn't lived in five years, rather than go back to his dad's place in Riverview, she said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The father did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment, and Phillips said she was not aware of the two of them ever arguing.
"Friday he got suspended from school for having a vape," she said earlier. "They spoke with his stepmother, and then supposedly put him on a bus, but nobody saw him after that."
Florida 15-year-old Tristan Constable was last seen leaving school Friday in Tampa. (Courtesy: Family of Tristan Constable)
Tristan appears to have gone to a friend’s house, she said, where social media videos showed him laughing about concerned friends and family members texting him following his failure to return to his father’s home in Riverview.
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Tristan’s father, Jason Constable, called police and visited that friend’s house Saturday morning, Phillips said. But their son wasn’t there.
Tristan Constable and his mother Leslie Phillips in an undated photo. Tristan was last seen leaving Tampa Bay Tech Friday. (Courtesy: Leslie Phillips)
"Friday night, one of his friends was posting videos of Tristan laughing at everybody who was calling and texting, and they were just kind of making fun of it all," Phillips said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Once we got wind that Tristan was at this boy's house, dad showed up with the cops, and the cops searched the place and couldn't find Tristan.
Tristan Constable is a member of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. (Courtesy: Family of Tristan Constable)
The friend, identified by Phillips only as Sean, would not tell the family where Tristan had gone, she said.
Tristan later allegedly sent a Snapchat message to a fellow JROTC member claiming to be in the Florida Keys.
(FDLE)
"Don't know how he would have got to the Keys since that's like a good five hours from Tampa, but that's where he says that he is," Phillips said. "I'm not positive on that, though. I think that that might be a ruse."
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