STUTTGART, Germany — A 15-year-old girl whose disappearance in July from Patch Barracks triggered a community-wide effort to find her flew on Sunday to the United States.
Kristina Karr had run away to the Czech Republic, her mother said, but had resurfaced in August.
Kristina, the daughter of Chief Petty Officer Joseph Karr and Anne Karr, told her parents she had been living in Prague and working at a bakery. She was reported missing on July 5 after she attended a July Fourth festival at Patch Barracks.
Anne Karr, who had chatted online with Kristina, said that her daughter met on Aug. 26 with an FBI agent in Prague, who persuaded the girl to return to the U.S. or face being an illegal alien in the Czech Republic with no protection from U.S. authorities.
Kristina’s parents had since moved with the Navy to Virginia Beach, Va. Kristina Karr is living with other family members in the U.S., Anne Karr said.
After Kristina Karr went missing, friends and volunteers posted flyers throughout the Stuttgart area, including at the airport and train station. Girl Scouts posted flyers at U.S. installations throughout Germany.
A prayer vigil was held at Washington Square on Patch Barracks, and notices were broadcast on AFN television and radio.
Anne Karr said the family received e-mails from concerned Germans about her daughter.
“I think that she really, truly didn’t know what we were doing in Stuttgart (to find her),” Anne Karr said.
Anne Karr is the former registrar at Patch Elementary School. Joseph Karr worked previously at the U.S. European Command’s intelligence directorate.
They and the police began suspecting soon after her disappearance that Kristina went to the Czech Republic to be with her boyfriend, whose family had recently moved there from Stuttgart.
But her boyfriend and the boyfriend’s mother have both denied seeing the girl, Anne Karr said.
