Suspect John Peter Byrns

Missing 11-year-old found with Illinois man

Suspect John Peter Byrns

ORLANDO, Fla. (WESH) – An 11-year-old girl who went missing from Orlando, Florida has been found in Georgia, and the man who convinced her to leave her home has been arrested.

The girl’s father said that she was last seen at their East Orange County home when she went to bed Saturday night. Sunday morning, he went to wake her for church and she was gone.

By late Sunday, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and FBI agents using electronic investigative techniques tracked the 11-year-old to Macon, Georgia, where police found her with a 24-year-old man at a Holiday Inn.

Officials with the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office said John Peter Byrns, of Hoffman Estates, Illinois, was taken into custody.

“This is someone that she’s been communicating with online under the guise of being a female and basically has just pulled her into a trap, so to speak,” her father said.

The girl’s parents said they were aware that she had been playing the game Minecraft online with a person who claimed to be a young woman from Illinois. The two had never met and her dad never dreamed his daughter might be in danger.

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