Teen Mom 2 alum Jenelle Evans’ son Jace has been found safe after he was reported as a runaway five months after she was granted custody of him.
Evans, 31, issued a statement through her manager August Keen on Tuesday, August 15.
“Jace has been found, and is safely at home with Jenelle and his family, thank you to the Brunswick Co. Sheriff’s Department and to everyone else for their concerns,” Keen shared with Us Weekly.
Shortly before the announcement that Jace had returned home, Evans told Us that Jace had previously gotten in trouble and had his phone taken away.
“As a boy mom, kids can act up and rebel as I’m sure the majority of us all once did as kids too,” the statement read. “Jace got in trouble at school, we decided to take his phone away and that’s when he decided to run off, Jace is a good kid and we’re not dealing with anything that most families don’t deal with while raising children, this has absolutely nothing to do with my situation with [my husband] David [Eason], we do not argue in front of our children or fight in front of our kids. This is a teenage boy being a teenager mad that we decided to take his phone away.”
TMZ was first to report on Tuesday that Jace, 14, was missing and the authorities were searching for the teen. He was last seen earlier that day leaving his school and donned a gray sweatshirt with the writing “Classical Charter Schools of America.”
The outlet noted they spoke with Jenelle’s mother, Barbara Evans, who last spoke to Jace on Monday, August 14. Barbara, 70, revealed that Jace seemed fine at the time. Barbara also shared she spoke to Jenelle earlier on Tuesday to see how her daughter was doing but Jenelle allegedly told her mom to leave her alone.
Last month, Jenelle posted a picture with her three kids: sons Jace and Kaiser, 9, and daughter Ensley, 6, as they trekked off on their first day of school. (Jenelle shares Jace with ex Andrew Lewis, while she shares Kaiser with ex-fiancé Nathan Griffith and Ensley with current husband Eason, 35.)
Us Weekly broke the news in March that Jenelle was awarded custody of Jace after more than a decade of being in Barbara’s care.
“My mother agrees it’s time for Jace to be back with his siblings and living with a mother and father,” Jenelle told Us in an exclusive statement at the time. “She also thinks it’s important for Jace to be around a father figure to learn ‘boy things’ and have ‘men talk.’ She has seen the way David parents my children and she knows we’re able to handle it.”
Meanwhile, Jenelle has been candid about her ups and downs with her husband over the years. In December 2022, the couple were seemingly at odds during Jenelle’s birthday after the former MTV personality claimed that Eason was missing from her celebration.
“TELL ME WHERE @DAVIDEASON88 IS CUZ IT’S MY BIRTHDAY AT MIDNIGHT AND HE’S GONE,” Evans wrote via her Instagram Story at the time, later uploading a photo of her left hand without her wedding ring. “I DON’T WANT TO EXPLAIN BUT JUST KNOW THAT MY BIRTHDAY WAS RUINED ? BY A NARCISSISTIC A—HOLE.”
Jenelle previously broke up with Eason in 2019 after he shot and killed their dog, Nugget, the incident that led to her firing from Teen Mom 2. The couple also temporarily lost custody of Kaiser and Ensley. They later reconciled, Jenelle revealed in a March 2020 YouTube video.
“I left him, and I was like, this isn’t going to be good when I go back to him,” she stated at the time. “I know some people don’t understand, but there’s a lot of worse things that have happened in my life than getting back with my husband and trying to work it out. For me, I was willing to give it a second shot.”
