An individual has been taken into custody in connection with the case of a missing 14-year-old girl.
Emmarae Gervasi vanished on December 9, 2024, and remained missing for 26 days.
Remarkably, the teenager’s father, aided by local police and anonymous tips, managed to locate her.
Emmarae was discovered safe on a boat in Islip, located just over 10 miles from her residence in East Patchogue, New York.
On the day she went missing, Emmarae had gone outside to collect some items from a vehicle parked near her home.
She was then observed getting into another car without her shoes or jacket, despite the rain.
The following day, security footage captured Emmarae knocking on doors at a motel in Bohemia.
In an interview with News 12 shortly after finding Emmarae nearly a month later, her father, Frank Gervasi, described the moment as a ‘gift from God’.
“It was 26 days of hell seeing her alive in my arms,” he expressed when discussing their reunion.
“It was a gift from God. I can’t describe the feeling I had when I grabbed her.”
Currently, a man has been apprehended in relation to Emmarae’s disappearance and faces charges of rape, child endangerment, and kidnapping, reports The Patch.
Defense attorney Danielle Marie Papa, based in Hauppauge, informed the outlet that online court documents indicate that Francis Buckheit has been detained and is being held without bail.
Buckheit has reportedly entered a not-guilty plea, which was submitted on Monday (January 6).
According to The Patch, Buckheit is scheduled to appear in court again on Wednesday (January 8).
UNILAD has reached out to Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney’s office for a statement.
Following the anonymous tip that helped find Emmarae, her father expressed his gratitude on social media.
“I’d like to thank the community for all the support you gave us,” Frank wrote the day after Emmarae was located.
“Posting all the videos, pushing all the content, handing out flyers, donating your time to look for my missing girl. It is those things that are going to help bring other kids home.”
Regarding the individual who informed him of Emmarae’s location on a boat in Islip, he stated: “I want to thank that person for coming forward and giving me information about my daughter. The phone call that I received was that she was on a boat in Islip. I followed it up on my own and I went down there to check.
“I bust into the boat and recovered my daughter. She has been saved and is alive. I believe it was persistency that helped bring her home.”
After being found last week, Emmarae was reportedly taken to the hospital for evaluation.