Police: Girl taken from Calif. foster parents by aunts nearly 7 years ago found in Ariz. home
By APThursday, July 15, 2010
Police: Abducted Calif. girl found in Phoenix home
PHOENIX — A girl abducted by three aunts from her California foster parents nearly seven years ago, when she was an infant, was found Wednesday living in Phoenix, authorities said.
Detectives from the Phoenix Police Department’s missing persons unit, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI located the 7-year-old girl at a Phoenix house.
A woman was trying to hide the child in a bathroom shower under a pile of clothes and towels when investigators searched the home under a court order, authorities said.
The girl was reported to be in good physical condition, and was being returned Wednesday night to California. Her name wasn’t released.
Police said three biological aunts — all juveniles at the time — abducted the girl when she was less than a year old, during a “noncustodial visitation” at a Norwalk, Calif., restaurant. The child was in the custody of foster parents at the time.
Two of the aunts were later arrested, and the third hasn’t been located, authorities said.
The girl apparently was not related to the Phoenix family with whom she was living, LA County Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Evans said. The investigation is ongoing, and no arrests have been made.
The girl had been kept out of schools and her name and birth date had been changed, authorities said. Footprints, photographs and DNA swabs were taken of the girl to confirm her identity.
