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Previously:

• CCPD Obtains Arrest Warrant Connected With Suspected Abduction of 14-year-old Crescent City Girl

• CCPD Seeks Information on Missing 14-year-old Girl

A 14-year-old Crescent City girl who went missing nine months ago was found in Nevada on Saturday with her stepfather, who was arrested on suspicion of concealing her from her parents, according to Crescent City Police Chief Richard Griffin.

Nevada State Troopers pulled 39-year-old Santos Flores-Roman over with Katauna Whisenant in the car near Fallon, Nev., Griffin told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Monday. Santos-Roman was arrested on an outstanding warrant and will be extradited to Del Norte County, Griffin said.

The Churchill County Sheriff’s Office has interviewed Whisenant, Griffin said. An investigation into the nature of her relationship with Flores-Roman is ongoing. Griffin said her parents were traveling to Nevada on Saturday to bring the teenager home.

“Initially she was a voluntary runaway — that’s why it didn’t qualify as an Amber Alert,” Griffin told the Outpost.

According to him, Whisenant had run away from home multiple times and was found in Santa Rosa and brought back to Del Norte County before she was reported missing on July 23, 2021.

“There were multiple contacts made down there and searches of Santos, Santos’s work, his mom’s residence, his sister. And it was ongoing. This was never a case where we stopped investigating,” he said.

CCPD has been working with the Santa Rosa Police Department, Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office and the Sonoma County Probation Department to find Whisenant.

Since Whisenant is a Yurok Tribal Member, Griffin said, CCPD has also partnered with the Yurok Police Department as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the FBI to locate Whisenant.

When the FBI got involved, Griffin said, they were able to conduct more pressing interviews with Flores-Roman’s family and to obtain search warrants for social media activity, Google Searches and Facebook messenger information the FBI was able to use during their interviews.

“One of the family members finally gave up that he had been hiding her down there for several months,” Griffin told the Outpost. “Once that happened, the FBI got ahold of him and had a scheduled interview with him. That’s when he left the Santa Rosa area with her and went northbound.”

On April 1, CCPD obtained an arrest warrant for Flores-Roman and the California Highway Patrol issued an endangered and missing child advisory in Tehama, Shasta and Siskiyou counties in an effort to find him and Whisenant.

According to Griffin, Nevada State Troopers pulled Flores-Roman over Saturday after noticing something suspicious about his car and running the license plate.

“I got the call earlier in the morning that she’d been located and he was in custody,” Griffin said. “And then within a few minutes, I was calling Mom and making notifications. I called the Yurok Tribe and notified them also because they had services standing by for her.”

Though he couldn’t go into detail, Griffin said Child Welfare Services is conducting an investigation into why Whisenant was running away from home.

According to Griffin, Nevada has up to 10 days to extradite Flores-Roman to Del Norte County, though the suspect can fight it and get that extradition extended. The FBI can also become more involved in the investigation since Flores-Roman took Whisenant across state lines, Griffin said.

“With him being over state lines with her, the FBI is now looking at their role in the case and possibly taking it over for federal charges,” he said.

Flores-Roman is currently charged violating California Penal Code 278 — maliciously concealing any child from their lawful custodian.
According to Griffin, CCPD and the Del Norte County District Attorney’s office is looking into filing charges against Flores-Roman’s family for “assisting in that conspiracy to keep the child away from the parents.”

“That was the main problem that we had, is they had multiple times and chances to come forward and say, ‘yeah, she’s down here,’” Griffin said. “We could have had her back several months ago.”

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