BY SUE MORGAN
Staff Writer
POLICE PHOTO WEST LONG BRANCH –– A teenage mother missing for almost two weeks from the home she shared with her grandmother and her one-year-old daughter has returned home safely.
Michaela Jackson, 15, came home during the day on Sunday and was reunited with both her grandmother and her child, Giana Hernandez, according to Captain Arthur Cosentino of the West Long Branch police.
“Both the mother and daughter are back home and healthy,” Cosentino said.
Michaela’s grandmother immediately notified police about the teen’s return, ending the search that had been going on since Nov. 7 when both the young mother had suddenly left her home in the borough with her baby, Cosentino said.
The grandmother, who police have not identified, offered little information about where Michaela had been staying since her disappearance or why she had left, Cosentino noted.
Michaela only told her grandmother that she left home because she “needed some time to clear her head,” Cosentino said.
Initial police reports had indicated that Michaela had left the home with Giana because she believed that the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) might place her in another home elsewhere.
Two days after the young mother and baby disappeared, local authorities distributed flyers showing photographs of both Michaela and Giana to area hotels and throughout the community, according to Detective James Gomez also of the West Long Branch Police Department.
On Nov. 11, borough police were contacted by Giana’s biological father, a Long Branch resident, who reported he had the child, Gomez said.
The father indicated that Michaela had left the baby with his sister, along with a note, before taking off alone, Gomez said.
Police would not disclose the contents of the note reportedly written by Michaela.
DYFS workers subsequently retrieved Giana from her biological father, and the baby was then turned over to the custody of the state agency and placed with her great-grandmother, who is Michaela’s grandmother.

