A teenage girl has been found pregnant in a wardrobe after going missing more than a year ago. The 14-year-old has been reunited with her dad after police were tipped off by a member of the public.
She was reported missing in 2021 and found bundled in a wardrobe on Tuesday, February 7, after a search of a home in Port Huron, Michigan, reports the Mirror.
Deputy Marshal Robert Watson told the Detroit Free Press of attending the house where the girl was found: "She was pretty upset, she was crying and she was pretty scared. She wasn't sure what was going to be happening to her.
"They wouldn't let us in. They wouldn't allow us to speak with anyone in the house, which were huge red flags for us. The lady said, 'Come back with a search warrant.' So we did."
The girl was found in the hallway wardrobe, just metres away from where two men were watching television while claiming they didn't know where she was, and was later taken to hospital for a wellness exam, where she was found to be pregnant.
Child Protective Services told Mr Watson that her father was "very relieved" that the teen had been found.
Equally, the girl was "ecstatic" to be reunited with her Dad and kept saying: "I wanna be with my dad. I wanna be with my dad."
Mr Watson said: "He [the Dad] had been dealing with this nightmare for a year and a half. And he's in a much better place now.
"When you can bring a child home to their family, especially when they’ve been gone a year and a half, I just couldn’t imagine what that’s like going through, that’s why this mission is so important to me."
Officials told the Detroit Free Press that they are pursuing parental kidnapping charges against the girl's mother, who had custody of the teenager.
Authorities believe the mother found her daughter after she ran away and then moved the girl from house to house. The occupants of the house could also be charged with harbouring a fugitive.
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