He shared romantic messages and sent the siblings food deliveries before driving nearly 24 hours to abduct them
Two young girls in Florida have been found safe after police say they were abducted by a man they communicated with on Roblox and Snapchat.
On Monday, Feb. 2, the Martin County Sheriff’s Office held a press conference in which they identified Hser Mu Lah Say, 19, of Omaha, Neb. as the suspect accused of driving nearly 24 hours straight to pick up the girls from Indiantown, Fla.
The sisters are 12 and 14 years old, police said when the two were initially reported missing.
Officials with the Georgia Highway Patrol located the three individuals in the suspect’s vehicle hours after the teens were reported missing, the Martin County Sheriff’s Office shared in a Facebook post on Jan. 31.
“This was a sobering case for us here at the county sheriff’s office, but we’re thankful with how it ended,” Martin County Sheriff John Budensiek said during Monday’s press conference.
Officials were alerted around 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 31 that the teens were reported missing “a few hours earlier.”
“They learned through their investigation that the same day, about 9 in the morning, these same two girls had gone to a local park there in Indiantown, had been found by a family member, brought back to their home [and] punished,” Budensiek said.
The sheriff noted that part of their punishment was having their cell phones taken away.
He noted that deputies learned through family members that there was “a potential suspect already” that had been communicating with the girls via Snapchat since the middle of 2025, who relatives believed was involved in the teens’ disappearance.
When looking at their cell phones for evidence, the Snapchat app had already been deleted, but investigators re-downloaded it and allegedly saw “a constant thread of communication” between the suspect and the young girls.
After seeing the messages, Budensiek said his team knew they were dealing with an abduction.
“I know these girls went willingly, but their age suggested that they had been taken and were probably being removed from our area,” he said.
Still, authorities searched local parks, hotels and other areas in Indiantown for the three.
Budensiek said it had been “freezing” that night and officials were “in full crisis mode” as they searched for the girls and the suspect.
“The communication initially started, we believe, and keep in mind we’re going through devices, in the summer of 2025, on a gaming app called Roblox. And from that gaming app, these girls were then moved from Roblox over to Snapchat,” he said.
He further alleged that the family noticed “weird” things happening, such as food “showing up to the house,” which led police to believe that the teens were being groomed by the suspect.
“He drove 22, 23 hours straight” to Indiantown, leaving Omaha on Friday, Jan. 30 and arriving in the Florida town around 10 a.m. on Saturday. The girls allegedly planned to meet Lah Say at the park that morning, but they were “disciplined” and taken home with their cell phones confiscated, Budensiek said.
Police allege that Lah Say was “milling around” as he waited for another chance to meet up with the teens. It is believed the girls used a family tablet at their home to restart the conversation after their phones were taken.
Lah Say was later charged with two counts of kidnapping and two counts of interference with child custody. As of Monday, he was in jail in Georgia as detectives worked to get extradition paperwork to take him back to Florida.
Budensiek said while he does not yet know what Lah Say’s plans were, he believes authorities “prevented something disastrous” from happening to the “impressionable” young girls.
Investigators did not find anything “sexually explicit” in the messages, but Budensiek said there were romantic exchanges.
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“Keep in mind, there’s a lot of work to be done, we’re still going through those devices,” he said.
When asked by reporters if the sisters had spoken to police yet, Budensiek stated that they were in the process of conducting interviews, after family members made the 5-6 hour trip to retrieve the girls.
Lah Say had no prior criminal history, police said.
