{"id":8537,"date":"2025-10-17T17:18:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T17:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/8537\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T17:18:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T17:18:26","slug":"fort-lauderdale-police-confirm-2-missing-endangered-children-have-been-found-safely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/8537\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Lauderdale police confirm 2 missing, endangered children have been found safely"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0October 2, 2025 at 4:43 PM<\/p>\n<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Updated:\u00a0October 7, 2025 at 7:12 AM<\/p>\n<p>Children\u2019s disappearance stemmed from custody battle, older sister saysSiblings reported missing out of Fort Lauderdale found safely <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.  \u2014 Fort Lauderdale police confirmed two missing, endangered children were found safe Thursday after initially asking for the public\u2019s help in locating them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/espanol\/2025\/10\/02\/policia-de-fort-lauderdale-busca-a-dos-ninos-desaparecidos-y-en-peligro-de-5-y-7-anos\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/espanol\/2025\/10\/02\/policia-de-fort-lauderdale-busca-a-dos-ninos-desaparecidos-y-en-peligro-de-5-y-7-anos\/\">Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Before they were found, police said 5-year-old Leonidis Stevenson and 7-year-old Xena Stevenson had last been seen along the 1600 block of Southwest 22nd Avenue on Thursday at approximately 11 a.m. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1760721506_346_H2JAS3FBYJHLBJWWHVJO6UW2VI.jpg\"  width=\"800\" height=\"450\"\/>5-year-old Leonidis Stevenson and 7-year-old Xena Stevenson 5-year-old Leonidis Stevenson and 7-year-old Xena Stevenson <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Authorities said they were believed to be with their father, Bradley Stevenson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Police said they initially responded to the area in reference to a person who had barricaded themselves inside a home, and after SWAT officers were called out and entered the residence, they discovered no one was there and that the children were missing. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Family members told Local 10 News\u2019 Samiar Nefzi that this all stemmed from a heated custody battle. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cHe decided that he wasn\u2019t going to give them over and it just escalated from there,\u201d said Kendall Stevenson, the older sister of the siblings. \u201cHe ended up escaping out the back and nobody caught him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Police have not said whether Stevenson was arrested or exactly how the reunification process unfolded.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2025 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Samiar Nefzi\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/https:\/\/author-service-images-sandbox-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/9dfe9245-12b2-40be-bc.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Samiar Nefzi <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">Samiar Nefzi joined the Local 10 News team in August of 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0October 2, 2025 at 4:43 PM Updated:\u00a0October 7, 2025 at 7:12 AM Children\u2019s disappearance stemmed from custody battle,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-8537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}