The suspect, 19-year-old Hser Mu Lah Say from Omaha, Nebraska, allegedly began interacting with the sisters, aged 12 and 15, through the gaming platform Roblox in mid-2025, according to officials.
(Credit: Martin County Sheriff’s Office)
The girls’ family quickly reported them missing on Saturday evening, alerting detectives to the situation. Sheriff Budensiek noted that during the summer of 2025, the family had observed unusual occurrences, such as unexpected deliveries of food to their home.
“All these things that I just mentioned were indicative of what we believe to be a grooming process that the suspect was doing with these young girls,” Budensiek said.
Officials said the family believed they had put a stop to the girls’ communication with Lah Say, but detectives learned their conversation moved off Roblox to Snapchat.
The sisters had their phones taken away earlier Saturday morning as punishment after they went to a park by themselves and did not return home on time. Detectives believe they were trying to meet up with Lah Say, who had left from Omaha, Nebraska on Friday.
Family brought the girls home from the park. The girls then vanished Saturday evening.
After receiving the report, investigators began scouring local hotels and parks. They also looked through the girls’ confiscated phones. Snapchat had been deleted off the devices, but detectives reloaded the app and discovered a “constant thread of communication” between Lah Say and the girls, the sheriff said.
Budensiek described their conversations as “romantic,” with Lah Say calling the older girl “baby.” However, the sheriff said there was no “sexually explicit” language in the messages.
A more recent message stated that Lah Say was driving to Indiantown to pick the girls up and leave, according to officials.
“Part of that communication was the suspect saying, ‘I drove all this way, please don’t leave me hanging’,” Budensiek said.
According to the sheriff’s office, Lah Say had been able to keep communicating with the girls via a family tablet at their home, despite their phones being taken away.
“At that point, our deputies that were on scene realized what we were dealing with. We were dealing with a type of abduction,” Budensiek said. “I know these girls went willingly, but their age suggested that they had been taken and were probably being removed from our area.”
The sheriff said he and his deputies entered “full crisis mode,” and called on other agencies to assist in the case.
Detectives used various investigative techniques to determine a timeline and what route Lah Say would likely be taking back to Nebraska with the two girls. A selfie Lah Say had taken at a gas station in Indiantown was key to the investigation, the sheriff added.
Investigators believe he picked the girls up around 6:45 p.m. Georgia State Police found Lah Say and the girls around 1 a.m. on Sunday, according to the sheriff’s office. At that point, they were about six hours away from Indiantown.
“When we finally got the phone call that he was stopped and the girls were safe, it was like we all decompressed,” Budensiek said. “The family actually came out and hugged us. They were tearful, they were just elated that those girls were safe.”
Lah Say was arrested and charged with two counts of kidnapping and two counts of interfering with child custody. He was being held in jail in Georgia Monday, but authorities expect him to be taken back to Florida to face his charges by the end of the week.
Budensiek said he’s unsure what Lah Say’s intentions were with the girls, but he believes they potentially “prevented something disastrous.”
“We have gone through the devices that we had available to us at the time,” the sheriff said. “We’ve not seen anything explicit necessarily, but we know our suspect was repeatedly warning these young girls that he could get in a lot of trouble for what he was fixing to do, so he knew he was violating the law.”
Investigators plan to search Lah Say’s phone to find out more information.
The sheriff warned parents that no online app is safe and said this case is a reminder to be vigilant when it comes to children’s online activity. He added that this case was resolved quickly partially due to the parents warning them of previous suspicious activity.
“There is no application online that’s safe, be it a gaming app, be it Snapchat, be it something as user friendly as Instagram or any social media application,” Budensiek said. “If you can communicate with somebody away from your house in the quiet of your room, it can be a problem. So parents have to be vigilant. In this case, they were vigilant.”
