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What is known about disappearance of child of former Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield?
Mint Butterfield, the 16-year-old child of Slack co-founder Butterfield, was reported missing by mother Caterina Fake on Monday.
Investigators say they do not believe foul play was involved in the disappearance of the teenage child of Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s billionaire co-founder and former CEO.
Sixteen-year-old Mint Butterfield, who uses the pronouns they/them, was reported missing by mother Caterina Fake on Monday.
According to Marin County Sheriff’s Office, Fake says she last saw Mint at their home in Bolinas, California, at around 10pm on Sunday evening. On Monday morning, Fake found that Mint was no longer at the residence and had left a note announcing their departure.
What is police’s latest update on Mint’s disappearance?
In a statement issued on Thursday, Marin County Sheriff’s Office said: “At this time, we have no information to believe that Mint was taken against their will. The Sheriff’s Office is considering Mint a voluntary-missing juvenile, who is ‘At-Risk’ due to a reported previous threat of suicide.
“Marin County Deputies entered Mint into the Missing and Unidentified Persons System (MUPS) and sent out All Points Bulletin flyers to surrounding law enforcement agencies with a description and photograph of Mint.”
Missing teenager could be in San Francisco
The statement added that Mint may have travelled to the Tenderloin District in San Francisco, located some 30 miles from Bolinas. Mint and Fake also share a home in the city, investigators noted.
“In collaboration with San Francisco Police Department, detectives from both agencies have attempted to find Mint, but have been unable to locate them at the time of this release,” Marin County Sheriff’s Office said.
Officials have told the San Francisco Standard that Mint has a history of substance abuse and is known to frequent the Tenderloin District, an area that the newspaper describes as being “infamous for drugs, homelessness and crime”.
What does Mint Butterfield look like?
In a description offered by Marin County Sheriff’s Office deputy Jose Suarez, Mint is said to have “brown/reddish curly hair” and pierced eyebrows. “They were last seen wearing a black sweatshirt, flannel pajama pants, and black boots,” Suarez added. “They possibly had a gray suitcase with them. Mint is approximately 5′0″ tall and 100 lbs.”
Anyone who has any information about Mint’s disappearance should contact Marin County Sheriff’s Office by phone at (415) 479-2311, or by email at tips@marinsheriff.org.
Who is Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield?
Mint is the only child from Butterfield’s former marriage to Fake, which is reported to have lasted from 2001 to 2007. While husband and wife, the pair founded the image and video-hosting platform Flickr together in 2004.
Butterfield later co-founded the team-messaging software Slack, which was first released in 2013. Slack was then acquired by cloud-based software company salesforce for $27.7 billion in July 2021. Butterfield left Salesforce in December 2022. Per an April 2024 estimation by the finance magazine Forbes, the 51-year-old Canadian boasts a net worth of around $1.6 billion.