See the update at the end of this post about Kyva Roberson being found safe and healthy this morning on the campus of Costa Mesa High School.
ORIGINAL POST, MAY 7, 1:42 P.M.: Irvine Police are looking for a 12-year-old boy who is believed to have run away from home after being disciplined at school Monday.
The call came in about Kyva Roberson around 10 last night and officers and detectives worked through the night to find him.
]
He is believed to have left his home near Culver and Deerfield drives around 3 p.m., and investigators discovered he'd hooked up with a neighborhood friend about a half hour later. Both were seen in surveillance video at the McDonald's at Culver and Irvine Center Drive just before 7 p.m. The friend later left Roberson alone, and the missing boy has no money or cell phone with him, according to police.
He is described as 4-feet-8 and 80 pounds. He was last seen wearing jeans, a zip-up navy blue jacket, white socks, sandals and a light blue Orlando Magic cap. Roberson speaks with an Australian accent. Here is another look at him:
The boy is currently home schooled, but he was a previous student of Venado Middle School. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Irvine Police Department at 949.724.7200.
UPDATE, MAY 8, 11:20 A.M.: The Irvine Police Department reports Kyva Roberson was found safe and healthy on the campus of Costa Mesa High School this morning.
Just before 5 p.m. Tuesday, an Orange County Transit Authority bus driver spotted a boy he believed may have been Kyva getting off a bus near the high school, according to a statement from Irvine Police Lt. Julia Engen, the department spokeswoman.
Irvine and Costa Mesa cops checked the area into the evening but were unable to find him. Orange County sheriff's deputies then retrieved video from the bus that showed the boy had been aboard as the bus driver thought, Engen said.
Costa Mesa Police detectives returned to the high school to search for additional security video this morning but, while there, a cop noticed Kyva moving about the campus with the students around 8:20 a.m., said Engen. “While the two Costa Mesa detectives were working on getting video from the school, one of them noticed a student that looked too small to be in high school,” the spokeswoman explains in an email to the Weekly. “She also noticed the white socks with flip flops. … They really did a great job following up out there.”
Costa Mesa Police handed the boy off to Irvine detectives, who then returned him to his family “in good health,” according to Engen.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.