Mint Butterfield has been found. Alive and in good condition. The good news was given by the Marin County police a week after the announcement of her disappearance, through a press release also distributed on social media. «Mint was found in San Francisco with an adult friend – we read in the document – identified as Christopher “Kio” Dizefalo, 26 years old, from San Francisco.” The teenager, who is the daughter of founder of Slack Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, founder of Flickrwas with the boy in a white van, from where she was picked up.
The boy was accused of “multiple violations”
Christopher Dizefalo was immediately interrogated and accused of «multiple violations». Then it was arrested and taken to a cell in Marin, with bail set at $50,000. Mint instead returned to her mother’s house in Bolinas, the city about 50 km from San Francisco where she was last seen. Mint’s police thanked their San Francisco colleagues for their collaboration in the investigation and the citizens who in recent days have “tried to locate Mint and provided details that helped find the girl.”
Points still to be clarified
Even though the story had a positive epilogue, some points still remain to be clarified about the story. For example, the reason for the voluntary removal of the adolescent, which at the beginning of the investigations had been linked to drug use, especially Fentanyl, among the most widespread in San Francisco. Then the role of Dizefalo, who has not yet been defined, currently the only person arrested in this case.
San Francisco and Fentanyl
The fact that the girl was found in San Francisco (even if the investigators did not indicate exactly the area where Mint was), still keeps the search for the man at the top of the list of causes for the removal. Fentanyl. This drug is so widespread that the municipality of the Californian city has a dedicated page on its official website. «50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. The number of overdose deaths is increasing not only in the city but across the nation” are just the first lines of the document updated in March 2024. Among the most dangerous characteristics of Fentanyl is its very low costwhich makes it
also attractive to young and very young people who don’t have much money at their disposal. Mint, according to police, had already frequented the Tenderloin neighborhood, often cited as the center of the country’s “opioid epidemic.”
