RCMP highlight missing children cases this week, including 4 Sask. disappearances

Police are hoping to shine a light this week on the disappearances of four Saskatchewan children, amongothers.

RCMP are launching a week-long campaign that will feature 45 missing children on the Canada's Missing website, leading up to May 25, National Missing Children's Day.

That list of children includes Courtney Struble, Tamra Keepness, Mekayla Bali and Kevin Charles.

Of the four, Charles's disappearance has gone on the longest.

The 16-year-old disappeared April 3, 1993 from Chitek Lake, Sask., along with his grandmother, Mary Nancy Goodfellow.

Courtney Struble has been missing since2004.

The 13-year-old vanished in the early morning hours of July 9, 2004, after she left her friends at the west edge of Estevan, Sask., and walked home.

Five-year-old Tamra Keepness also went missing in 2004, vanishing without a trace from her home in Regina, on the 1800 block of Ottawa Street.

Mekalya Bali was 16when she disappeared from Yorkton, Sask., on April 12, 2016. Police have tried to piece together her movements and calls that dayin an attempt to find clues.

Police are encouraging people to visit canadasmissing.ca to help with the search for these children and others.

"It's our hope that by sharing the stories of these missing children, someone out there might remember something,"Chief Superintendent Marie-Claude Arsenault, director general for the National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains, said in a news release.

"Please read their stories and help bring them home."

Police say 57 per cent of all missing person reports involve children.

Of those missing children/youth reports, 73 per cent involve runaways. And within a week, 92 per cent of thereports are removed from the website, according to police.

In 2018, 42,233 children were reported missing inCanada.