Family, police seeking information on missing 15-year-old girl from West Jordan
Sophia Rojas, 15, was last seen on June 3, and she has had absolutely no contact with her friends or family since, West Jordan Police Department said.
Police also believe that she may be with an adult and lying about her age. She was last seen wearing a grey suit and pants.
ABC4.com spoke to Sophia's family, and they shared a message: 'We just want her to come home.'
She is Hispanic with dark brown eyes and black hair. She is 5'2″ tall and weighs roughly 130 pounds.
West Jordan Police are asking that anyone with information about Sophia Rojas contact 801-256-2000 and reference case WJ25-27102.
The Utah Department of Public Safety has a page on its website with , and you can on the website as well.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children also has resources for .
Here is a list of hotlines and resources from a 2021 guidebook by the :
: 800-799-7233
: 888-373-7888
: 833-872-5176
: 800-786-2929
: 800-273-8255
: 844-762-8483
Bureau of Land Management approves construction of Millard County potash mine
November statewide special election for collective bargaining referendum 'not off the table,' Cox says
Family, police seeking information on missing 15-year-old girl from West Jordan
RSL hoping to make a run in second half of season
Utah lawmakers oppose AI regulation in Trump's 'Big, beautiful bill'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Newsweek
5 hours ago
- Newsweek
Illegal Migrants Strip, Rob Woman Before Killing Man—Affidavit
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Three undocumented migrants charged in connection with a fatal shooting at a Texas motel were allegedly involved in a robbery and sexual assault hours earlier, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by Fox 4. The suspects are accused of targeting a woman at a nearby motel before returning and fatally shooting 48-year-old Santiago Lopez Morales in Garland, the outlet reported. The three men are being held without bond because of an immigration detainer. The Context The suspects include Jose Luis Trivino-Cruz, 35, who is being held on a total bond of $3.255 million, Fox 4 reported. In addition to capital murder, he is facing charges of aggravated robbery and indecent assault. Jesus De Nazareth Bellorin-Guzman, 23, has been charged with capital murder and aggravated robbery, the outlet reported. His bond has been set at $2.25 million. Yosguar Aponte Jimenez, 20, is also charged with capital murder and is being held on a $1.5 million bond. Flashing lights from a police vehicle parked behind yellow police tape in Houston on July 11, 2024. Flashing lights from a police vehicle parked behind yellow police tape in Houston on July 11, 2024. Aaron M. Sprecher/AP What To Know Police were called to the Motel 6 in the 12700 block of LBJ Freeway just after 5 a.m. on June 20 for reports of a shooting, according to the Garland Police Department. Officers found Morales with a gunshot wound. He was taken to a hospital, where he later died, Fox 4 reported. Four witnesses who arrived with Morales were interviewed at the scene. One woman told police she had been robbed earlier and that Morales began messaging the suspects while posing as a prostitute to set up a meeting at Motel 6, according to the arrest affidavit obtained by Fox 4. Surveillance footage shows a pickup carrying Morales arriving at the motel around 4:21 a.m., followed by a Toyota and a gray Acura, according to the outlet. Just after 5 a.m., Morales confronted a man from the Toyota, leading to a struggle. A second suspect arrived and shot Morales, while the third suspect, driving the Acura, pulled up to the scene before all three fled in the Acura and Toyota, Fox 4 reported. Morales was left motionless and bleeding. Two women from the pickup approached his body. One appeared to call 911. The first officer arrived at 5:19 a.m. and began first aid, according to Fox 4. Detectives later linked the incident to an earlier robbery that morning at the Deluxe Inn on Leon Road. Surveillance video showed the same Acura and Toyota from the Motel 6 scene, Fox 4 reported. A woman at the Deluxe Inn told police that two Hispanic men forced their way into her room, held her at gunpoint, sexually assaulted her, and stole money and jewelry before leaving, the outlet said. She later identified the men in the Motel 6 surveillance video as her attackers. Police then arrested Jimenez, Bellorin-Guzman and Trivino-Cruz, Fox 4 reported. Jimenez told investigators that the group had committed more than 25 robberies, often targeting sex workers, who they believed were unlikely to report the crimes. Trivino-Cruz said they had committed two additional robberies earlier that day, according to Fox 4. What People Are Saying Garland Police Department wrote on Facebook: "Investigators believe this to be an isolated incident and are actively working to determine the events leading up to the shooting." What Happens Next Authorities have not confirmed the countries of origin for the suspects. The investigation remains ongoing, according to the Garland Police Department.


Los Angeles Times
19 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Irvine man charged with hate crimes against Latino men, accused of racial slurs and throwing hot coffee
An Irvine man was charged with hate crimes against Latino men after he was videotaped allegedly hurling racial slurs and throwing hot coffee on one man and punching an elderly man. Robert Tackett, a 54-year-old Irvine resident, was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm, a felony count of violation of civil rights, a felony count of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury and a felony count of inflicting injury on an elder adult, according to an Orange County District Attorney's Office news release. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of eight years in state prison, officials said. He is being held on $500,000 bail at the Orange County Jail. According to the release, Tackett had a 'negative interaction with the driver of a garbage truck' and the incident was filmed by another driver. Tackett allegedly followed the driver who filmed him, tried to run him off the road and slam into his vehicle, and yelled 'anti-Hispanic racial slurs.' Tackett allegedly tried twice to crash into the driver's vehicle and threw a hot cup of coffee onto the car and driver, authorities said. The driver didn't call police but was identified after he posted the video on social media. In a video obtained by KTLA5, a man later identified as Tackett was seen driving a white work van and swerving into the lane of the driver, who was taking the video. In a second incident around 5:30 p.m. on the same day, Tackett is accused of getting out of his van after stopping at a stoplight in Westminster and punching a 72-year-old driver through the window of his pickup truck 'while yelling profanity and anti-Hispanic slurs,' authorities said. Another driver recorded the alleged attack and called the Irvine Police Department after seeing the video of the first attack on social media, officials said. Tackett was arrested by California Highway Patrol on July 24 in Mammoth, officials said. 'Hate is a venom that poisons everything — and everyone — it touches. An attack motivated by hate is not an attack on just a single individual; it is an attack on the very fabric of our society and our community as a whole,' said Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer in the release. .


Time Magazine
a day ago
- Time Magazine
Police and Courts Are Turning to AI. Is the System Ready for It?
Can AI be used to make the criminal justice system more fair and efficient, or will it only reinforce harmful biases? Experts say that it has so far been deployed in worrying ways—but that there is potential for positive impact. Today, AI tech has reached nearly every aspect of the criminal justice system. It is being used in facial recognition systems to identify suspects; in 'predictive policing' strategies to formulate patrol routes; in courtrooms to assist with case management; and by public defenders to cull through evidence. But while advocates point to an increase in efficiency and fairness, critics raise serious questions around privacy and accountability. Last month, the Council on Criminal Justice launched a nonpartisan task force on AI, to study how AI could be used in the criminal justice system safely and ethically. The group's work will be supported by researchers at RAND, and they will eventually take their findings and make recommendations to policymakers and law enforcement. 'There's no question that AI can yield unjust results,' says Nathan Hecht, the task force's chair and a former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice. 'This task force wants to bring together tech people, criminal justice people, community people, experts in various different areas, and really sit down to see how we can use it to make the system better and not cause the harm that it's capable of.' Risks of AI in law enforcement Many courts and police departments are already using AI, Hecht says. 'It's very piecemeal: Curious people going, 'Oh, wow, there's this AI out here, we could use it over in the criminal court.' But because there are few standards for how to deploy AI, civil rights watchdogs have grown concerned that law enforcement agencies are using it in dangerous ways. Thousands of agencies have come to rely upon facial recognition technology sold by companies like Clearview, which hosts a database of billions of images scraped off the internet. In many databases, Black people are overrepresented, in part because they live in communities that are overpoliced. AI technology is also worse at discerning differences in Black people's faces, which can lead to higher misidentification rates. Last year, the Innocence Project, a legal nonprofit, found that there have been at least seven wrongful arrests from facial recognition technology, six of which involved wrongfully accused Black people. Walter Katz, the organization's director of policy, says that police sometimes make arrests solely based on AI's facial recognition findings as opposed to having the AI serve as a starting point for a larger investigation. 'There's an over-reliance on AI outputs,' he says. Katz says that when he went to a policing conference last fall, 'it was AI everywhere.' Vendors were aggressively hawking technology tools that claimed to solve real problems in police departments. 'But in making that pitch, there was little attention to any tradeoffs or risks,' he says. For instance, critics worry that many of these AI tools will increase surveillance of public spaces, including the monitoring of peaceful protesters—or that so-called 'predictive policing' will intensify law enforcement's crackdowns on over-policed areas. Where AI could help However, Katz concedes that AI does have a place in the criminal justice system. 'It'll be very hard to wish AI away—and there are places where AI can be helpful,' he says. For that reason, he joined the Council on Criminal Justice's AI task force. 'First and foremost is getting our arms wrapped around how fast the adoption is. And if everyone comes from the understanding that having no policy whatsoever is probably the wrong place to be, then we build from there.' Hecht, the task force's chair, sees several areas where AI could be helpful in the courtroom, for example, including improving the intake process for arrested people, or helping identify who qualifies for diversion programs, which allow offenders to avoid convictions. He also hopes the task force will provide recommendations on what types of AI usage explicitly should not be approved in criminal justice, and steps to preserve the public's privacy. 'We want to try to gather the expertise necessary to reassure the users of the product and the public that this is going to make your experience with the criminal justice system better—and after that, it's going to leave you alone,' he says. Meanwhile, plenty of other independent efforts are trying to use AI to improve the justice processes. One startup, JusticeText, hopes to use AI to narrow the gap between resources of prosecutors and public defenders, the latter of whom are typically severely understaffed and underresourced. JusticeText built a tool for public defenders that sorts through hours of 911 calls, police body camera footage, and recorded interrogations, in order to analyze it and determine if, for example, police have made inconsistent statements or asked leading questions. 'We really wanted to see what it looks like to be a public defender-first, and try to level that playing field that technology has in many ways exacerbated in past years,' says founder and CEO Devshi Mehrotra. JusticeText is working with around 75 public defender agencies around the country. Recidiviz, a criminal justice reform nonprofit, has also been testing several ways of integrating AI into their workflows, including giving parole officers AI-generated summaries of clients. 'You might have 80 pages of case notes going back seven years on this person that you're not going to read if you have a caseload of 150 people, and you have to see each one of them every month,' says Andrew Warren, Recidiviz's co-founder. 'AI could give very succinct highlights of what this person has already achieved and what they could use support on.' The challenge for policymakers and the Council on Criminal Justice's task force, then, is to determine how to develop standards and oversight mechanisms so that the good from AI's efficiency gains outweigh its ability to amplify existing biases. Hecht, at the task force, also hopes to protect from a future in which a black box AI makes life-changing decisions on its own. 'Should we ensure our traditional ideas of human justice are protected? Of course. Should we make sure that able judges and handlers of the criminal justice system are totally in control? Of course,' he says. 'But saying we're going to keep AI out of the justice system is hopeless. Law firms are using it. The civil justice system is using it. It's here to stay.'