UNITED STATES: POLICE SAY 32 CHINESE TEENAGERS WHO WENT MIISING FROM LOS ANGELES AIRPORT MERELY CHANGED TOUR COMPANIES AND DID PLAN TO DEFECT

Record ID: 337570

  • Title: UNITED STATES: POLICE SAY 32 CHINESE TEENAGERS WHO WENT MIISING FROM LOS ANGELES AIRPORT MERELY CHANGED TOUR COMPANIES AND DID PLAN TO DEFECT
  • Date: 2nd March 1999
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (MARCH 2, 1999)(RTV) 1. LV EXTERIOR LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT 0.05 2. PAN MEDIA AT NEWS CONFERENCE 0.10 3. SCU SOUNDBITE (English) COMMANDER DAVID KALISH, LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT (LAPD), SAYING "They have located two of the children. They are with a host family in a town east of here and they a
  • Embargoed: 17th March 1999 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
  • City:
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA7SG9FK6IK8AUWYWKT4U6PM28B
  • Story Text: Thirty-two "missing" Chinese teenagers who left Los
    Angeles International Airport 90 minutes before they were due
    to fly home to Shanghai merely changed tour companies and did
    not plan to defect, as first thought, police said on Tuesday
    (March 2).

    Los Angeles Police Commander David Kalish said the 18
    girls and 14 boys, ranging in age from 14 and 17, found
    themselves caught up in a rivalry between two tour companies.

    The students had been in southern California studying English
    at the University of Redlands.

    Police said they were called to the airport on Monday
    (March 1) after representatives of the tour group that had
    sponsored the teenagers for a month in the United States took
    them to the airport only to see them "spirited away" in a
    convoy of minivans.

    "There was apparently some problem or some problem or
    conflict between two sponsoring tour companies with the
    students," Kalish told reporters.

    Kalish said he did not know the names of the companies.

    "They (the students) completed being hosted by one tour
    company...and then in a rather bizarre way they changed to
    another company who had assumed the legal authority for their
    presence here and their continuing studies," Kalish added.

    The search for the teenagers was carried out by the Los
    Angeles Police Department's Missing Person Bureau.Police said
    at first they thought the students might be trying to defect.

    Kalish said police knew of the whereabouts of 25 of the 32 teenagers.

    Kalish said they were being looked after by sponsoring
    families in Covina, a suburb of Los Angeles, and he assumed
    the other seven were in similar circumstances.He said the
    students were in the United States legally with six-month
    visas and their travel plans had been changed by the second
    tour company.

    "This has truly been a bizarre incident," Kalish said.


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