Missing Kids Found After Four Years

[Faith]

Missing Kids Finally Found
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July 9, 2008 - 5:27PM
Karen Zatkulak

http://images.onset.freedom.com/wtvc/k3rdm4-missingkids.jpg

A mother is on the way to pick up her three kids, who were abducted four years ago. Collegedale Police tell us the 7, 8, and 13-year-old were taken by their grandmother back in 2004 and their mother hasn't seen or heard from them since.

The three kids were living in central Florida, when their grandmother picked them up without permission from their mom, and took them to Collegedale, Tennessee. Their mother had no way to get in touch with them or find them, but after several years, the missing children report was filed and investigators in Collegedale began trying to track them down. On Tuesday, they finally did, and authorities caught the grandmother and the found the kids in Guntersville, Alabama.

Collegedale Sgt. Randy Barber has the poster a mother made of her three kids when they went missing. "This is the poster she made herself, she sent it to me in the first letter." That letter introduced Barber to the three kids, Alexis and Jasmine Harmon, and Graciella Pinckney.

Their mother said she'd left her kids with her sister one day back in 2004, but their grandmother, 62 year old Maria Mendez, picked them and took them away.

Barber says, "If they had never gotten entered into the system... They would have never known it, those kids would probably be lost in the system forever."

But instead, Barber posted the kids and their abductor on the national missing and exploited children's website, and tips started coming in. He says, "Posters went nationwide and I had received phone calls from people all over the country and it got a lot bigger than I thought it would ever get."

But even though the file got bigger, the kids still couldn't be found. He says investigators were, "Always a step behind, we would get tips and she had either just been or had lived there, then moved on."

Including a call just two weeks ago that Mendez and the kids had been spotted at the Ooltewah Seventh Day Adventist Church, but police were still a step behind until Tuesday. The successful tip finally came in when a neighbor in Guntersville, Alabama noticed the three kids said they used different names. She got suspicious and checked the missing children's website and found the three had in fact been abducted. Authorities then caught up with them at a church picnic in Guntersville, Alabama, and their mother got the good news she'd been waiting years to hear.

Barber says when he called her, "She was very happy to hear the news, there were lots of tears and she was just excited to get on the road to Guntersville and pick up her kids."

The mother is now driving from Florida to Guntersville, Alabama and should pick up her kids on Thursday morning. As for the grandmother, police tell us she'll be charged with three felony counts of custodial interference.

http://www.newschannel9.com/news/kids_970021___article.html/ago_pick.html

[packy]

This will be one happy reunion, after those years of seaching.

[LiveLaughLuv]

Including a call just two weeks ago that Mendez and the kids had been spotted at the Ooltewah Seventh Day Adventist Church, but police were still a step behind until Tuesday. The successful tip finally came in when a neighbor in Guntersville, Alabama noticed the three kids said they used different names. She got suspicious and checked the missing children's website and found the three had in fact been abducted. Authorities then caught up with them at a church picnic in Guntersville, Alabama, and their mother got the good news she'd been waiting years to hear.

Kudos to that person who was so alert. It pays to pay attention. :zm10:

[Faith]

I wish I could be around to see the reunion. It will be a happy one I'm sure.

[Shotzie]

I wish I could be around to see the reunion. It will be a happy one I'm sure.

Hopefully there is a follow up and we will get to see it..
This is a great ending.:happy0158:

[ReddCurrlz]

OH! This is such wonderful news - brings tears to my eyes. I just can't imagine my mother doing that to me. I wonder why she did that to begin with. She must have thought the kids were in danger with their mom? Gosh who knows! Who am I to speculate. When my mom and I get in our little spats, she is vendictive and evil, but we always make up; I don't think she would ever do that but :shrugs: who knows?

Thank GOD for the tips.

[Roamer]

Wow. That's great news. Guntersville's not more than 20 miles from me. Wish I could see that reunion!

[Heidi J.]

I remember seeing their missing poster. What a happy ending!!:s1gyahoo:

[Sumanadevii]

Including a call just two weeks ago that Mendez and the kids had been spotted at the Ooltewah Seventh Day Adventist Church,

Not too hard for me to figure out why grandmother took the children. She was saving them for the Lord...:rolleye0001:

[Pandabear]

The three kids were living in central Florida, when their grandmother picked them up without permission from their mom, and took them to Collegedale, Tennessee (2004). Their mother had no way to get in touch with them or find them, but after several years, the missing children report was filed and investigators in Collegedale began trying to track them down. On Tuesday, they finally did, and authorities caught the grandmother and the found the kids in Guntersville, Alabama.


Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but why would the mother wait several years to file a missing children report? Something is just screwy with that. :waitasec:

[Faith]

Child Pictured On Police Car Recovered
Last updated Saturday, July 12, 2008 3:58 PM CDT in News

FORT SMITH - Graciella S. Pinckney's picture was displayed on a Fort Smith police patrol car Tuesday - and she and her two siblings were found and went home Tuesday, police Sgt. Adam "Buddha" Holland and a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children representative said Friday.

Pinckney, now 7, and her siblings, Jasmine Joy-Lynn Harmon, now 8, and Alexis Aaron Harmon, now 13, were abducted from Collegedale, Tenn., by their noncustodial grandmother, Maria Magdalena Mendez, on Dec. 3, 2004, said D'Ann Taflin, a communication manager for the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

They were recovered in Alabama, Holland said, "thanks to some keen citizens catching discrepancies in info about the kids."

"It does not appear at this time it is in direct relationship to her image on the squad car, but it is proof that children can and do come home," Holland said. Holland heads the department's Cyber Investigation Division.

Taflin said the children are fine. "It's a happy ending," she said.

On Tuesday, the Fort Smith department became the second police department in the country to post missing children's pictures on their patrol cars.

Four Fort Smith squad cars were unveiled Tuesday. Twenty of the 30-car fleet are destined to each display pictures of children reported missing from the region. Eighteen will feature two children. Two cars each carry pictures of two local missing children - Morgan Nick who was abducted from an Alma ballpark in June 1995 at age 6, and Tony Allen, a Southside High School sophomore who disappeared from his Fort Smith home in 1978. Their pictures depict them as they looked at the time of they went missing and as they would look now, using age-progression technology.

The Clarksville Police Department was the first law enforcement agency to team with nonprofit Alma-based Morgan Nick Foundation and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the "Picture Them Home" campaign. That department unveiled its cars May 2, and within 24 hours, 16-year-old Dixie Rogers, a runaway from Conway was recovered in Conway and reunited with her family.

The Clarksville department placed a "recovered" sticker over Rogers' photo. The Fort Smith department will do the same with Pinckney's photo, Holland said.

Clarksville's effort was funded through the Clarksville City Council. Rheem Air Conditioning Division, which operates a Fort Smith manufacturing plant, provided the funding for the Fort Smith department's effort.

Another local law enforcement agency - the Sequoyah County Sheriff's Department - will be the third in the nation and the first in Oklahoma to do likewise with 12 of its vehicles. That unveiling is planned for July 21.

Taflin said the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provided the photos to all three agencies.

"This is good. We're getting a lot of good publicity, and that's how these children are found," Taflin said.

The campaign has placed children's pictures on business vehicles, billboards and the like, Holland said.

"The options are limitless as to how anyone can help, even if it is simply putting up a poster in your business," Holland said.

http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2008/07/12/news/071308trchildrecovered.txt

[Audie]

This is an awesome story. I'm glad to see that some LE are getting more involved.

I don't understand one thing, though. Why does it need funding? Are the missing flyers painted on the cars?

[TigressPen]

So thrilled these babies are safe and will reunite with their mother! :happy0158: I am wondering what took Florida so long to put out the missing report.

[ReddCurrlz]

roamer maybe the reunion will be aired locally since you're so close
It's such a shame that so many other silly things are aired and reported on, like stupid marriages, you know, the ones that are really stupid; irrelevant news or incomplete news/alleged news. and REAL news stories, like this one, just don't take precedence except in their own county or city

[incidentally]

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but why would the mother wait several years to file a missing children report? Something is just screwy with that. :waitasec:

I'm confused too.

[Nut44x4]

Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)

July 15, 2008 Tuesday

Children found with relative to return here for hearing

A year and a half ago, Sarai Brooker contacted the Collegedale Police Department asking for help in locating her three children, taken 2 1/2 years earlier by her mother while Ms. Brooker was in jail on drug paraphernalia charges. Maria Mendez, who had ties to a Collegedale church, was taken into custody July 8 in Guntersville, Ala., after a neighbor tipped off the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about the situation. The three children were found unharmed.

head: Florida children to be transferred to Hamilton County

Online: Hear Wayne Sellers talk about child transfers. Comment.

By Jacqueline Koch

Staff Writer

Though an investigation into three Florida children missing for four years ended when they were found in Alabama last week, the Collegedale Police Department detective who helped find them must wait a little longer before he feels at peace with the outcome.

On July 8, police in Guntersville, Ala., took grandmother Maria Mendez into custody and charged her with custodial interference in connection with three children reported missing by their mother, Sarai Brooker.

But the children -- Alex Harmon, 13; Jasmine Harmon, 8; and Graciella Pinckney, 7 -- were not returned to their mother after a court found that Ms. Mendez was awarded temporary custody of the children in Hamilton County, Collegedale police Sgt. Randy Barber said. The charges against Ms. Mendez, who had ties to a local church, also likely will be dropped, he added.

"We did the right thing by looking for those kids," Sgt. Barber said. "As far as the law enforcement side of it is concerned, our job is basically complete. Personally, I feel like my job is undone because the mom hasn't got her kids back. That's when I'll feel like I finish my case."

The children will be transferred from Guntersville to Hamilton County for a hearing in August, Sgt. Barber said. The court then will decide whether Ms. Brooker -- in prison for drug paraphernalia when the grandmother originally took custody of the children -- will regain custody.

"The drive and determination she had to get her kids back was enough for me to believe that she had straightened her life out and was back on track," he said.

Because of the legal bureaucracy involved in such a case, the time frame for a state-to-state transfer depends upon the speed with which it moves through the state court systems, said Wayne Sellers, director of the Marshall County Department of Human Resources in Guntersville.

Local agencies must send and receive information from their respective state's agency instead of dealing directly with each other, he added.

"Ultimately the judges are the ones who make the (custody) decisions," Mr. Sellers said. "We're bound by the court orders."

Awarding custody in Tennessee also falls under the ruling of courts, which examine the person requesting custody via background checks, home studies and any prior involvement in the child welfare system, said Rob Johnson, communications director at the Tennessee Department of Children's Services in Nashville.

Ideally, courts want to place children with people who know them and where they can remain with siblings and near friends, he added.

"They want (custodians) to be safe for the child," Mr. Johnson said. "They don't want it to be any more disruptive to the child than it has to be."
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100020825&docId=l:822043751&start=7

[Details]

Interesting case. Sounds like the grandmother decided her daughter was a bad influence on the kids, and moved them. I wonder how much she really has and has not shaped up.