Missing girl found after seven years in US
By IANSFriday, July 16, 2010
WASHINGTON - A girl, missing for the past seven years in the US, was found by police hidden in a shower under a pile of clothes and towels.
When officials showed up at a house in Arizona looking for the missing California girl, the family inside were “evasive and untruthful”, said Capt Patrick Maxwell of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Norwalk Station.
CNN reported that the family members were told to show birth certificate or adoption papers for Amber Rose Nicklas. They couldn’t and then admitted that the seven-year-old girl was not theirs.
The child had gone missing in September 2003.
She was with her foster parents in Norwalk, California, when she was taken away by three of her aunts. Two of the aunts were caught but a third got away with the infant.
Maxwell said it appears the girl had been living with the same family in Phoenix, Arizona, for most of the time she was missing.
Authorities had gone there with a court order Wednesday.
Phoenix police Sgt. Trent Crump said that when they tried to serve the court order, they found that a woman had hidden the child in a shower under a pile of clothes and towels, said
Amber’s real identity was confirmed through footprints and DNA swabs.
