A Stratford woman is working with police to find her 16-year-old daughter who ran away from home on Tuesday.

The family of 16-year-old Ah'Janea Davis says that the past few days have been the most painful of their entire lives.

LaShaunne Henry, Ah'Janea's mother, was joined by more than 30 anxious family members at her home Sunday morning.

They say they are all desperate to find Ah'Janea, who is an 11th-grader at New Haven Academy in New Haven.

"She packed clothes and she left, and from what the detectives say, she's trying to go to New York," Henry says. "If my daughter goes to New York, it will be like a needle in a haystack trying to find her and locate her."

Bridgeport School Resource Officer Steve Nelson says that he has worked with hundreds of runaway children during the course of his career. His advice for others parents to keep their kids from running away is to keep an open line of communication and to closely follow who they communicate with on their cellphones.

"You just have to pay attention and monitor as much as you can what your children are doing," he says.

Stratford police say they are investigating the case and are asking anybody with information to come forward.