Missing N.Y. girl found in Richmond

A 14-year-old girl reported missing more than a week ago by authorities in New York was found early yesterday in the company of a 33-year-old man at a hotel in Richmond.

Richmond police arrested the man; the girl was being held by authorities in Richmond while her parents and police from her hometown came to Virginia.

"In this day and age of missing juveniles and everything, it's about as good an ending as we can get out of it," Richmond police Capt. Harvey S. Powers said.

Powers said Richmond police were contacted just before midnight by detectives from Saugerties, N.Y., a town along the Hudson River about 90 miles north of New York City.

Powers said police in Saugerties had reason to believe the teen, who had not been seen since she failed to arrive home from school Oct. 27, was traveling with a 33-year-old man and that they might be in North Richmond, in the area of Azalea and Chamberlayne avenues.

Dispatchers alerted officers in Richmond's 4th Precinct, which generally covers the northern areas of the city, and officers quickly located a car with New York tags in a hotel parking lot. Officers showed a photograph of the missing girl to the hotel's desk clerk, who directed them to the room where the girl and the man were staying.

Joseph N. Nelson, 33, whose last known address was in Saugerties, was being held on a felony charge of taking indecent liberties with a child. Powers said the girl, who did not seem to be injured, appeared to be traveling willingly with Nelson.

Police in Saugerties did not respond to requests for comment, but Police Chief Louis Barbaria yesterday told the Daily Freeman newspaper of nearby Kingston, N.Y., that the girl's parents called police Oct. 27 after she didn't come from school.

The school resource officer at Saugerties High School found she may have been in the company of Nelson, and police tracked the pair by their cell-phone signals, Barbaria told the New York paper.

The girl's phone signal stopped broadcasting in Maryland, but Nelson's signal led authorities to the hotel in North Richmond, Barbaria said.

Police were continuing to investigate how the pair knew each other, he said.

Contact Joe Macenka at (804) 649-6804 or .