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"Find Our Children" Segments

CNN’s HLN partners with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children^® to air a series featuring one missing child case each week. The series, titled "Find Our Children," is hosted by anchor Christi Paul and airs weekly on HLN's Raising America.

Zachary Byrd

Zachary Byrd

Abductor: Donald Byrd

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Zachary Byrd was taken from his mother’s home in Encino, California, by his grandfather, Donald Eugene Byrd, in the middle of the night on September 2, 2011. Zachary was 12 years old at the time. The abductor had taken Zachary once before and kept him for five weeks.

Since September 2011, there has been no information on the whereabouts of Zachary or his grandfather. A felony child abduction warrant for Donald Byrd was issued by the Los Angeles Police Department on November 18, 2011.

Zachary is now 14 years old. When last seen he was 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 152 pounds. He could be slightly taller and bigger since he was in the middle of a growth spurt when taken. He has blue eyes and brown hair and has a mark on the center of his head where hair will not grow.

Zachary’s favorite subject at school is math. He also loves video games, and playing on PlayStation or on his PC. His favorite cartoons are Pokeman and Airbender, and he loves to go to the arcade to play video games, air hockey, bowling and miniature golf. He is a very picky eater and only likes to eat pizza or breaded or fried chicken and refuses to eat beef. His favorites are Popeye's Chicken, KFC Popcorn Chicken, McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, Tyson's chicken patties, Cheese Pizza from Pizza Hut, Totino's frozen pepperoni pizza (only the tiny cubed pepperoni kind) and Totino's pepperoni pizza rolls. Zachary often gets allergies and may require medication for it.

Donald Eugene Byrd

Donald Eugene Byrd was born on June 26, 1954, and is 58 years old. He sometimes goes by his nickname of Don. He is a former middle school history teacher, is about 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighs around 250 pounds. He has blue eyes and black hair with some graying on the side. He wears prescription glasses, but is also known to wear contacts at times. After he stopped teaching, he frequently bought storage units at auctions and resold the items at flea markets and garage sales. He also worked part-time as a security guard on the weekends. Donald can be a very reserved and quiet person and prefers to be at home and, when out, will sit back and watch people. It is possible that he is home-schooling Zachary.

If anyone has any information regarding Zachary Byrd, please contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST or visit www.missingkids.com.

The description of this case was transcribed from the "Find Our Children" segment and contains information that is public or was released by law enforcement. Any criminal charges mentioned are only accusations and all defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law.

Previous “Find Our Children” segments