Florida teen Sophia Cover is safe and on her way home two weeks after she wandered off in the middle of the night without explanation and wasn’t heard from for more than 10 days before popping up at a friend’s house in New Jersey some 1,200 miles away.
“I don’t even know if there are enough words to express the gratitude I feel right now,” the 16-year-old’s father, Rick Cover, posted on Facebook Wednesday with a video collage showing him and Sophia smiling widely while on their way back to Florida.
‘Today, I’m sitting on a plane, bringing Sophia home. After everything that has happened, just being able to look over and see her sitting beside me is something I will never take for granted,” he said.
Cover was spied on a home security camera leaving her Golden Gate Estates home after midnight on July 31, kicking off a massive search operation headed by state and federal officers.
Rick Cover feared the worst, telling The Post he believed “someone has my daughter” – but on Aug. 11, he shared in a social media post that she had been found safely staying with friends in the Garden State, with no further explanation given for her departure or how she ended up so far from home.
He addressed the obvious gaps in the story of her disappearance in Wednesday’s Facebook post.
“There is a lot to unpack. There are a lot of questions that still need answers, and over the next week I will share more about Sophia’s journey and what happened,” he promised.
“But for right now, I’m going to decompress. I’m going to be her dad. I’m going to hug my little girl, get her home to her brothers and sisters, and start getting to the root of how we ended up here so we can begin moving forward.”
