A Nebraska man has been charged with driving to Florida to kidnap two sisters he met through the online gaming platform Roblox.
Hser Mu Lah Say19, is behind bars in Georgia, where authorities said they stopped his vehicle and rescued the girls, ages 12 and 14. Say was driving the girls back to Nebraska when he was arrested.
According to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office, Say met the girls through Roblox during the summer of 2025 and continued to communicate with them through Snapchat.
The brothers do not appear to have been physically harmed, authorities said during a news conference on Monday, February 2.
Say has been charged with two counts of kidnapping and two counts of interfering with the custody of minors.
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“We talk regularly about the importance of parents and family members being vigilant about grooming and social media platforms and the impact they have on children,” Martin County Sheriff said. John Budensiek during the press conference. “In this case, I think we avoided something disastrous,” noting that investigators still did not know what the suspect planned to do with the girls.
Budensiek said the girls disappeared around 5pm on the evening of Saturday, January 31, hours after their parents took their phones as punishment.
“Family members suggested to our deputies that someone on (Snapchat) might be involved in the disappearance of these girls,” Budensiek said.
Police looked at the girls’ phones and found “a constant thread of communication between this individual and these two girls to include the suspect … driving to Indiantown, Fla., to pick up these girls and leave,” Budensiek said.
Budensiek said that while “these girls went” with Say “voluntarily … their age suggested that they had been taken and were probably being taken out of our area.”
“The family told us they saw some strange things going on with gifts, mostly food, being presented at the house,” Budensiek continued, adding that authorities say Say engaged in “a grooming process … with these girls.”
The sheriff said the suspect allegedly left Omaha, Neb., on the morning of Friday, Jan. 30, and arrived in Indiantown on Saturday morning.
Budensiek said authorities were able to track Say’s vehicle and the route of travel he was taking back to Nebraska, so they had Georgia State Police locate the car and officers took him into custody.
Budensiek urged parents to keep a close eye on their children’s online interactions.
“There is no online application that is safe,” he said. “If you can communicate with someone far away from your home in the quiet of your room, it can be a problem. So parents need to be on the lookout.”
Budensiek said Say has refused to talk to detectives.
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It was not immediately clear if the suspect had retained an attorney. You will be asked to enter Florida in turn.
In a statement, Roblox’s head of security Matt Kaufman said the matter was under investigation and described the hijacking as a “deeply troubling incident” before saying the company was committed to working with law enforcement. “Roblox has strong security policies to protect users that go beyond many other platforms and advanced safeguards that control harmful content and communications,” explained Kaufman.
“We have filters designed to block the sharing of personal information, do not allow user-to-user image or video sharing, and recently implemented age checks globally to limit children and teens from being able to chat with others their own age by default,” he continued. “While no system is perfect, our commitment to security never ends and we continue to strengthen protections to keep users safe.”
Snapchat could not be reached for comment.