Twenty-four Year Old Mitrice Richardson Disappears After Release from LA Jail.

In the early morning hours of September 17, 24 year old Mitrice Richardson was released from custody at the Calabasas County Jail in Los Angeles, California. A custody staff agent advised her to stay and wait in the jail lobby until morning, but the young woman said she was going to meet some friends. There were reported sightings of her after Mitrice departed the jail but none of these were confirmed.

You could say that's how things are in L.A. and lots of people would agree with you but Mitrice Richardson had a degree from Cal State Fullerton and had moved to a relative's house in L.A. to be nearer where the jobs are. Mitrice Richardson was a substitute teacher, and an administrative assistant at a transportation company. Her 1990 Honda, impounded by the police who arrested her for marijuana possession and failing to pay an $89.00 plus change restaurant bill, was another indication that she was a functioning member of society but not of its high life. What was she doing at a restaurant in Malibu? Having dinner, a cocktail, and maybe a good time until it came time to pay the bill. But maybe life was getting a little too hard for her and she needed to feel like she was living good for a little while and so she ordered whatever she wanted at Geoffrey's Restaurant on the scenic Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

The restaurant staff said that Mitrice Richardson was acting strangely and they thought she was drunk. The sheriff's deputies who came to arrest her didn't think so, though, and they busted her for the small quantity of marijuana and for not paying the bill. The woman tested out okay, and met all the qualifiers; the sheriff's department personnel said she wasn't mentally ill and not drunk. They had no reason to hold her and besides, they were out of room in the county lockup. So out the door she went, last seen for certain at the jail but with sightings of a woman likely being Mitrice Richardson on porches and lawns of a posh Malibu neighborhood in the subsequent days.

Police and rescue teams have mounted a search but it has not yielded results. Mitrice Richardson's father worries that his daughter is being detained and held somewhere against her will. If the restaurant staff was right in telling investigators that the behavior of the young woman was strange and that she told restaurateurs she was from Mars and began speaking in a made-up language, then it is possible she was having a psychotic episode, perhaps drug induced, perhaps not. Marijuana alone is usually not powerful enough of itself to induce psychosis, but combined with fatigue, anxiety, and inherent destabilizing factors, it can be the slight push needed to drive someone over the edge.

The trouble with that possibility, in places like Malibu and in other American cities, no one cares too much if you're slipping down. People are too hardened, too accustomed to the bizarre and the needy. We try to help sometimes, but weakly and without resolve, because it's only natural to worry about social infections. Social infections like not having the right job, the right look, the right money, and associating with the right people. We've got ourselves to worry about, that's what we tell ourselves.

I wouldn't myself go walking out on a California highway in the early morning hours, not with all the vampires on Ventura Boulevard. It's likely Mitrice had half a plan, but not the good half. Her mother, Alice Sutton spoke to the police at the Calabasis sub-station to tell them she'd pick up Metrice in the morning, then finding out she'd already been released. Metrice Richardson is now lost, another episode of LA's version of reality TV.

Description: Richardson is African-American, 5-foot-5-inches and approximately 135 pounds. She has brown, curly hair and hazel eyes, and was last seen wearing a dark shirt and blue jeans, police said. According to a flyer made by her family, Richardson has tattoos on her lower abdomen and behind her neck.

Police asked anyone with information on her whereabouts to call the LAPD's Missing Persons Unit at (213) 485-5381, or 1-877-LAPD-24-7 after business hours or on weekends.