Ocoee police say Zion Ward could be in danger

Ocoee police are continuing their search for Zion Ward, the 11-year-old girl who police say left an Ocoee foster home last month and hasn’t been seen since.

“We know that someone is helping or sheltering her in the Mercy Drive and West Colonial Drive area of Orlando,” the Ocoee Police Department posted on its Facebook page.

According to police, Zion left the home in the 2000 block of Twisted Pine Road in Ocoee Friday, July 17, around 5:30 p.m. She is described as 5-foot-3 and weighing 110 pounds. She was last seen wearing a black shirt, black jeans and a flowered bonnet, and also was carrying a gray-and-black fanny pack, police said. 

Police are considering Zion an “endangered runaway.”

“The fact that she’s 11 years old — we’re worried about her being exploited or a victim of something,” said Ocoee Police Officer Michelle Grogan. “Usually, we’ve had spottings or Crimeline tips — but we have had nothing, nothing except one tip through the Crimeline that she was in the Mercy Drive area.”

Ocoee police have contacted the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and Zion is now in that system as well.

Grogan said there’s a misconception about children in the foster system.

“The foster care director said sometimes people think foster kids are bad and more often it’s a good kid who has been taken out of a bad situation,” Grogan said.

Anyone with any information about Zion is asked to call Ocoee Detective Leo Gomez at (407) 905-3160 or Crimeline at (800) 423-TIPS.