MANDEVILLE, Manchester – There is growing concern about the safety of a 16-year-old student of BB Coke High School following her disappearance after leaving school on Tuesday.

The Junction police say Ruth-Ann Nembhard, a native of Precious Plain in South Manchester, left school at the end of the morning shift sometime after mid-day on Tuesday. She was reported missing by relatives after failing to return home.

Police say the teenager who is four feet, seven inches tall was wearing the yellow uniform of her school with black shoes and brown socks and a one-strap knapsack when last seen.

Police say they have established that Ruth-Ann took a taxi to Gutters on the Santa Cruz to Mandeville main road after leaving school.

Relatives told the Observer yesterday that they had received reliable reports that the teenager travelled to Mandeville on Tuesday and when last seen had “cut off her hair”.

Distraught parents Bill and Marlene Nembhard were circulating posters with the picture of their missing child in Mandeville yesterday. They told how they had been desperately calling her telephone since Tuesday but all “we can get is voice mail”.

Zenobia Wellington, principal of BB Coke High, told the Observer that Ruth-Ann’s disappearance had triggered “great concern” in the school community necessitating counselling sessions for some students.

Numerous rumours – mostly unsubstantiated – of attempted or actual child abductions and disappearances in St Elizabeth as well as other areas of southern and south-western Jamaica had made the situation worse, she said.