A young teenager missing for two years has been reunited with her father after being found in alive and pregnant in a wardrobe by police. The 14-year-old was rescued after a member of the public tipped cops off to search a home in Port Huron, Michigan, last week.
Despite the occupants of the house "vehemently denying that they had seen her" and giving the officers some "bogus information", officers carried on the search and were shocked to find her bundled into a wardrobe, reports the Mirror.
Deputy Marshal Robert Watson told the Detroit Free Press: "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."
Then they found her in the hallway wardrobe, just metres away from where two men were watching television while claiming they didn't know where she was. She was later taken to hospital for a wellness exam, where she was found to be pregnant, Mr Watson said.
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."
Subscribe here for the latest news where you live
Officials told the Detroit Free Press that they are pursuing parental kidnapping charges against the girl's mother, who had custody of the teenager. Mr Watson authorities believe the mother found her daughter after she ran away and started bouncing the girl around house to house. The occupants of the house could also be charged with harbouring a fugitive.
