NEW ORLEANS (AP) – A truck stop cashier spotted a sex offender and a Florida teen who’d been missing for a week, setting off a 40-mile chase across Louisiana swampland that ended when a tire on the man’s truck burst into flames, officials said Thursday.
The Florida man – Steven Myers, 41, of Plant City – and the 16-year-old girl both had stab wounds and were in serious but stable condition, police said. Investigators believe but have not confirmed that Myers stabbed the girl and then himself, said Cpl. Paul Mouton, spokesman for the Lafayette Police Department.
The teen, from Valrico in the Tampa Bay area, had been missing since June 11, according to a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office statement. The girl is bipolar and didn’t take her medications with her when she last left home, officials said.
In the statement, released Friday, officials said they suspected the girl might be with Myers, who is registered in Florida for a 1999 sex offense of child molestation in Georgia.
About 9:40 p.m. Wednesday, a truck stop attendant in Grosse Tete – west of Baton Rouge, and about a 10-hour drive from the girl’s home in Valrico – recognized the two from an alert on her cellphone shortly before she was called in for an unscheduled shift, her co-worker said.