Eight teens reported missing from Goochland facility, found safe by morning
Eight girls left Hallmark Youthcare at 1:58 a.m. Sunday and were back safe by 11 a.m. The search reached Route 288 and Broad Street in Short Pump.
Virginia State Police said eight female residents who left Hallmark Youthcare in Goochland County at about 1:58 a.m. Sunday were all found safe and returned to the facility by about 11 a.m. the same morning. The search spread into the Route 288 and Broad Street corridor in Short Pump, putting a West Creek Parkway incident in the middle of a busy regional travel and business area. Hallmark Youthcare is a psychiatric residential treatment center for adolescents ages 11 to 17, which made the overnight disappearance an immediate public-safety concern as well as a question of supervision inside a locked facility.
Hallmark Youthcare is located at 12800 West Creek Parkway and says it has served adolescents with emotional and behavioral mental health issues since 1976. The facility describes itself as a locked, secure residential home for at-risk youth and says it provides residential treatment, assessment and diagnostic services, and a substance-use specialty track. That mix of services places vulnerable teens in a setting that depends on close monitoring, controlled access and fast coordination when a resident goes missing.
Virginia State Police use the Commonwealth’s missing-persons clearinghouse, which is tied to the Virginia Criminal Information Network, the FBI and the National Crime Information Center, to move alerts quickly across agencies. That broader system helps explain how the search could expand beyond Goochland and into Short Pump in the early morning hours, when traffic is lighter but the geography still reaches Henrico County and the Richmond metro area. For nearby residents and businesses, the incident was a reminder that an event at West Creek Parkway can ripple well beyond the facility’s gates.
Questions about Hallmark’s oversight are not new. The Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services conducted 28 human-rights complaint inspections at the facility since the beginning of 2024, and a teen was charged in April 2026 with sexually assaulting another resident there while a separate sexual-assault investigation remained open. In 2018, three juveniles ran away from the Hallmark Youth Center in Goochland County and were later apprehended. Sunday’s search ended quickly, but it again put the spotlight on how the facility protects residents, responds when someone leaves, and communicates with police during an overnight emergency.
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