Amber Nicklas, a California girl missing for almost seven years was found last Wednesday by police in Phoenix, Arizona, authorities said. The girl had just turned a year old when she was abducted in September 2003.
She had been in the care of foster parents in Norwalk, California, when she was snatched by three of her aunts, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County sheriff’s Norwalk Station said. Two of the aunts were caught at the time. The third got away with the child, said sheriff’s spokesman Bill Evans. The girl then somehow ended up with a family in Phoenix that had no relation to her biological family, authorities said.
Authorities got a tip that the girl could be at a home in Phoenix and went there with a court order Wednesday afternoon. When investigators tried to serve the court order, they found that a woman in the home had hidden the child in a shower under a pile of clothes and towels, said Phoenix police Sgt. Trent Crump. The girl spoke English and some Romanian.
The girl’s identity had been changed, including her name and date of birth, police said. “The child was in good physical condition; however, very frightened about today’s events. She had also been withheld from schooling,” Crump said, and cannot read. Her real identity was confirmed through footprints, photographs and DNA swabs, police said.
A Los Angeles sheriff’s captain confirmed the girl’s identity as Amber Nicklas, who was abducted when she was one year old. Authorities flew her back to the LA suburb of Norwalk after she was found last Wednesday.
Amber, now 7, is in state custody in California and prosecutors will file charges, Crump said. Crump says the two women and a man were questioned but have been released pending possible charges by California authorities. Read more here.