Serenity June Dennard, a 9-year-old girl, was reported missing after she ran from the Black Hills Children's Home (BHCH), a residential behavioral-treatment facility in the 24100 block of South Rockerville Road near Rockerville, Pennington County, South Dakota, on the morning of February 3, 2019. Staff said Dennard and three other children were playing in the facility's gymnasium at approximately 10:45 a.m. when another child ran out; while a staff member followed that child, Dennard ran out of the gym unsupervised. A person arriving on the BHCH campus around 11:00 a.m. reported seeing Dennard walking north on South Rockerville Road near the property's cattle guard; she was not wearing a coat, and outdoor temperatures were below zero. She has not been seen or heard from since. She was last seen wearing a long-sleeved gray shirt with a floral pattern, a purple tank top, dark blue stonewashed jeans, and black snow boots. Facility staff did not call 911 until 12:26 p.m., roughly 101 minutes after Dennard was reported to have left the gym.
The Pennington County Sheriff's Office is the lead agency, assisted over the course of the investigation by the FBI, the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, and more than 60 additional local, state, and federal agencies; the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has supported the case with age-progression imagery, most recently released in May 2023. Search efforts, described by investigators as among the largest in South Dakota history, have involved more than 1,200 personnel, K9 teams, and aircraft covering thousands of miles of wooded and rugged Black Hills terrain; no evidence of Dennard's whereabouts has been recovered. A state Department of Social Services and federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services review found BHCH's supervision and its 911-notification delay fell short of required standards; the facility's parent organization, Children's Home Society, later saw its executive director retire. Investigators have said they have found no evidence that Dennard was abducted, and the case is officially classified as Endangered Missing; it remains open and active as of this writing. Case identifiers: NamUs MP55257, NCMEC #1349395, NCIC #M104985340, Pennington County Sheriff's Office case #19-100887. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Pennington County Sheriff's Office at (605) 394-6115 or NCMEC at 1-800-843-5678.
