- Roshin Ali fled her Tennessee home at 13 fearing her father would kill her
- Officer Tyler Schrupp helped search for Ali in 2010 but never met her then
- Ali and Schrupp reunited years later as colleagues at the sheriff's department
A woman who ran away from home as a frightened 13-year-old has fallen in love with the police officer who once helped search for her. Roshin Ali was 13 when she fled her Jackson, Tennessee, home in fear that her father would kill her. Among the officers assigned to find her was then-26-year-old Tyler Schrupp, who never actually met her during the search.
Twelve years later, fate brought them together again when Ali, now an adult, began working at the local sheriff's department, unaware that one of her colleagues was the officer who had once been involved in her case.
The two soon struck up a conversation and felt an immediate connection. As they got to know each other, Ali opened up about her traumatic childhood and the details sounded eerily familiar to Schrupp.
"We started putting the dates together and then she described the area," Schrupp told The NY Post. "That's when I started to be like, 'Okay, I was a part of that. It's crazy that back then I was looking for you, and now we're sitting here talking."
The pair began dating, got engaged in August 2024, and now share a five-month-old son. They plan to marry next year.
Ali, who goes by Roro Nicole on social media, shared her story on TikTok. The clip shows her shaking hands with Schrupp and introducing him as "the officer who went searching for me while missing."
She posted a four-part video series on TikTok detailing the story of her disappearance and the years that followed.
In 2010, Ali said her father, a gambling addict who rarely allowed his children outside, came home furious after losing all his money and threatened to kill his family.
"We immediately ran into our bedroom because we were afraid that he was going to start beating on us like he normally does whenever he comes home upset," she said on TikTok.
Her sister braced herself against the door as their father tried to force it open. "So then he told my mom to go get a knife and then he began to try to stab her through the door," Ali recalled.
When he finally broke in, he dragged her sister away and began beating her with a cable wire. "We can literally hear her begging him not to kill her. He duct taped her hands together, her legs together and then placed duct tape on her mouth so nobody could hear her screaming," she said.
Ali and her 12-year-old brother jumped out of a window and ran to a nearby park. Her father later called police to report them missing.
When officers arrived, Ali's sister told them about the assault, and both parents were arrested but spent only "a couple of days" in jail. Ali and her siblings, aged 12 to 16, were placed in foster care, where she remained until she turned 18.
Years later, when Ali started working for the sheriff's department, she and Schrupp discovered their unexpected connection.
"He said, 'I was searching for you,'" Ali remembered. "The whole situation was shocking to both of us, but I thought it was pretty cool."