'Most of the worry's gone,' father says

PERRYVILLE, Mo. -- Brandon Lundmark, 14, and Brianna Williams, 12, have been charged with vehicle theft in the wake of the weeklong odyssey that began in Perryville and ended for the runaways in the Florida Panhandle.

Police say Brandon Lundmark took his father's pickup truck and left town with Brianna Williams on March 19. They eluded police until Monday morning when the Santa Rosa County, Fla., Sheriff's Department found the two in a Milton, Fla. residence.

"Everybody's relieved they were found and doing all right," Brandon's father, Jerod Lundmark, said. "Most of the worry's gone."

Both children are being held in a Pensacola County, Fla., juvenile detention center. When they will be returned home is unknown, said Santa Rosa sheriff's Sgt. Scott Haines.

Lundmark said Gina and Brian Williams, Brianna's parents, were en route to Florida on Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.

Without his truck, Lundmark, a paraplegic, can't travel to see his son. The truck was specially outfitted to permit him to drive with his disability.

The truck has sustained some body damage, he said. With the expense of storage at the impound yard in Florida, he's anticipating an $800 bill.

Lundmark said he now knows Brandon was planning to take his truck and to run off with Brianna, who he has said he won't live without. Brandon had been grounded for taking the truck to see Brianna when he was told not to, Lundmark said. He had forbidden Brandon from seeing Brianna until he got his grades up at school.

He said Brandon used to move the truck out of the garage at night so he could practice skateboarding, something he now thinks was part of a plan to eventually take the truck out for rides to get used to driving it. He said he'd noticed the gasoline levels were lower than they should have been the next day.

"After he left, people were calling and telling me they'd see him driving somewhere late at night," Lundmark said. "Then I knew that's what he was doing."

Brandon was already on probation for fighting at school when he left home, Lundmark said, so he will face charges of probation violation in addition to the auto theft charge.

He said he hopes Brandon gets a severe penalty for what he has done, not to punish him but to impress upon him the wrong path he is taking. "I'm going to tell the judge to give him a lot of time to think about things," he said.

carel@semissourian.com

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