KTLA

MALIBU -- Law enforcement officers and volunteers will be searching Malibu Creek State Park Saturday for a 24-year-old woman who disappeared after being released from the sheriff's Malibu-Lost Hills station Sept. 17.

Witnesses said Mitrice Richardson was drunk and unable to pay her $89 bill at Geoffrey's restaurant on PCH about 10 p.m. that night.

Richardson was taken by deputies to the Malibu-Lost Hills station and booked on suspicion of not paying for the meal and possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, according sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.

The marijuana was allegedly found in her white 1990 Honda Civic, which was impounded.

Richardson was released about 1:25 a.m. Friday because "she exhibited no signs of mental illness or intoxication," according to Whitmore.

"She was fine. She's an adult," Whitmore said.

Her mother, Latice Sutton, says she called the station to ask about posting bail and picking up her daughter, but deputies told her they had released her because they did not have room to keep her in jail.

The sheriff's station is on a frontage road to the Ventura (101) Freeway, in a business park that is unfamiliar to the woman, her family said.

It is not served by buses at night, and family members say the woman has not contacted the family or been seen by them since.

"They allowed her to walk out of that facility and down that road in the pitch black night," he said. "That's not right," said Richardson's father Michael.

Witmore says Richardson made several phone calls from the station.

He added this: "One of our jailers, a female jailer, offered to her to stay the night. She could have stayed, but she wanted to leave."

Her family said her purse, identification and cell phone were left in her car. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Spokesman Steve Whitmore disputed that claim and said Richardson had her identification with her when she left the station.

Detective Kristin Merrill of the Los Angeles Police Department's Missing Persons Unit says investigators believe Richardson walked several miles from the police station, eventually stopping at a house between 6 and 6:30am.

"What we discovered. was someone matching her description was seen on a resident of the area's porch. They then called the sheriff but our missing person had left the area," she said.

Michael Richardson, says he was worried about his daughter's mental state after seeing her booking photo.

"She looked like a demon had come inside her. That was not my daughter," he said. "It ran chills up my spine. I've never seen my daughter look like that."

Whitmore said the sheriff's department is working in conjunction with the LAPD and actively searching for Richardson.

Richardson is a graduate of Cal State Fullerton and recently moved to Los Angeles to live with her grandmother near the area where she planned on teaching.

Richardson is black, 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs about 135 pounds.

She has brown, curly hair and hazel eyes, and was last seen wearing a dark shirt and blue jeans, police said.

Richardson has tattoos on her lower abdomen and behind her neck.

Police urged anyone with information on her whereabouts to call the LAPD's Missing Persons Unit at (213) 485-5381, or (877) LAPD-24-7 after business hours or on weekends.