DENVER – The FBI said Tuesday that it’s investigating the possibility that three teenage girls from the Denver area tried to travel to Syria to join Islamic State extremists.
An FBI spokeswoman says agents helped bring the girls back to Denver after stopping them in Germany. Spokeswoman Suzie Payne says they’re safe and have been reunited with their families.
The girls are two sisters, ages 17 and 15, and a 16-year-old from another family, said Glenn Thompson, bureau chief of the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Department, whose officers took missing persons reports on the girls Friday. Their families told deputies they had left home without giving any indication of where they were headed, Thompson said.
The sisters had stayed home from school sick, and the 16-year-old never reported to school, which alarmed her family, Thompson said. The families reported no prior problems with the girls.
“Neither reported any knowledge of where they might have gone,” he said. “The deputies just took a report.”