SE Virginia Abductions

Teenage children in Virginia have been going missing since early January 2025. Virginia State police reported that 3,274 children had been reported missing by August 2025, and a high of 141 were missing in January alone.

Social media has blown up with rumors about these missing children and whether ice cream trucks are involved. People online started posting videos of ice cream trucks driving around neighborhoods at strange hours, sometimes even after midnight. That, combined with the reports of dozens of missing children in the state, made a lot of people wonder if the two things could be connected. The story spread fast, especially on Tiktok.

“My son John is at Virginia Tech, and I hope these allegations aren’t true because I’d be really upset if anything ever happened to him,” NHS FLEX para teacher Kate Geerer said. 

Police and state officials, though, have been clear that there’s no evidence that links ice cream trucks to the missing kids. They explained that the numbers look shocking because Virginia sends every single missing persons case, including runaways, to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Other states don’t always report runaways the same way, so Virginia’s numbers look higher than average even though most of the cases are resolved quickly. 

“There’s reported kids missing, and just every week there's an average of 98 kids missing, so they could've been reported missing in January and still not found, and they are just on that list every week,” NHS school resource officer SRO McDermott said. 

“Only 141 out of 3,274 are still missing, so the percentage is 90% has been found again. If a kid is reported missing, there’s now a missing child report in our system, but they could’ve just been missing for 10 minutes, like if a parent called in a panic but the kid was hiding under the bed,” McDermott said.

Virginia State Police addressed the viral TikTok videos with a report of missing children in Virginia on Facebook. People and parents were concerned with the response. This became a bigger issue as the state police were accused of covering up the alleged kidnappings. 

“Whether these children are missing because of mass abductions or not, the number of missing children and human trafficking are both very real problems impacting Virginia communities, and we aren’t talking about real problems enough,” Comments on the report read, “88 children missing in just one week is alarming…Many clustered from the same neighborhoods…Law enforcement attributing these disappearances primarily to runaways overlooks a deeper issue…We need to question that. It’s hard to believe multiple kids from the same area would all suddenly leave the safety of their homes for petty reasons.”

“I think the ice cream man is kind of a stretch. I think a majority of them are probably runaways. Some of them were probably legitimately abducted, which is awful. But, as far as the ice cream man, I think the majority of them are just runaways,” said NHS security guard Joe Bunnell. 

Some of the social media videos suggest that AMBER Alerts haven't been sent out about the kids, and in a mass abduction event, it should be reported. The criteria to send out an AMBER Alert are specific, though. They are only sent out when a child under 17 has been abducted and is in serious danger, as well as when other criteria are met. Only two AMBER Alerts have been issued in Virginia this year, and the children in both alerts were found safe.

CODI Alerts, which is what was sent for most of these children, are similar to AMBER Alerts, but they're issued in Virginia for only students under 17 who are missing under suspicious circumstances. 25 CODI Alerts in Virginia so far this year have resulted in a safe recovery of the children involved.

Still, a lot of people remain skeptical. They point to videos of trucks driving at 1 or 2 a.m. and argue that it doesn’t make sense for an ice cream truck to be out that late. The strange timing, along with the rise in posts about missing kids have made the rumor hard to dismiss for some. While there hasn’t been any confirmed connection, the theory continues to gain attention.