A 6-year-old child missing since 2019 in the United States was found alive last Tuesday (15) by police hiding under a ladder at the home of her biological parents, who no longer have custody of her.
The case drew attention because, in the investigation process, the police had already visited the house a number of times since the disappearance, almost three years ago, but only now the girl was found hiding.
Paislee Joann Shultis was 4 years old when she was reported missing in July 2019 in a village near the city of Ithaca, in upstate New York, where she lived with the family who have custody of her – it is not clear why her biological parents lost custody.
Since the beginning of the investigations, the suspicion was that she had been kidnapped by her biological parents, but the police had not found her in the searches they carried out in the surroundings of where the family lives, more than 260 kilometers from the village where she disappeared, according to the American network CNN.
“Each time we encountered resistance from the residents of the house. They said that the child was not there, that we were harassing the family,” said the police chief in an interview with the local press.
Investigators even entered the house a number of times, but without a warrant, the owners of the place would not allow them to carry out extensive searches. Until, last Monday, Justice granted a search and seizure warrant after receiving information that the girl was hiding at the scene.
After just over an hour of searching, agents noticed that the steps leading to a basement appeared to have been constructed in an improvised way. With a flashlight, the police noticed a hole in the wood and, inside, a blanket. As he started to remove the steps, they turned a foot.
Upon accessing the hideout, classified by the police as dark and damp, they found the child alive with his biological mother.
Police suspect that the girl has been in the house since 2019 and that the stairs were built to hide the two. Agents arrested the girl’s biological parents and grandfather, who were indicted for putting a child’s well-being in jeopardy and interfering with a custody process. They have since been released but are not allowed to approach the child, according to CNN.
At first, the child felt intimidated by the agents, who entered the house armed and arrested her biological parents. But the cops found a way to get around it. On the way to the police station, the agents passed a McDonalds in the car and the girl remembered that she had already eaten at the restaurant a long time ago. “Detectives turned around and went to the drive-thru, where they got a Happy McLanche. She was fine after that,” the chief of police said, according to CNN.
