Girls aged 4 and 11 kidnapped from Burger King in 'extreme danger' for 12 hours
Two abducted girls have been found 12 hours after they went missing from a Burger King.
A comprehensive police search located the children on Monday morning roughly a day after they were abducted from western Georgia in the US. Authorities had previously warned that the pair were in “extreme danger.” The alarm was raised after Kylie Horne, 11, and Kylann Harper, 4, went missing from a Burger King in Columbus, Georgia, at 11.52am, Sunday October 15.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said the two girls were last seen with Mikaela Harrell, a 49-year-old woman with a range of prior convictions. Her relationship with the girls remains as yet unknown. A second person of interest was identified as Kaila Spires, she was flagged by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as the children’s mother.
On Monday the Columbus Police Department said: “As of Monday, October 16, 2023, at approximately 11.30am, both children have been located in the area of South Georgia and are safe. The investigation is ongoing, and charges could be forthcoming for those involved in the abduction.”
Kalia Spires was the children’s mother and she had been taken into custody (Atlanta News First)
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said the two girls were last seen with Mikaela Harrell (Atlanta News First)A later release from the same police department confirmed that the second person of interest, Kalia Spires was the children’s mother and she had been taken into custody. The Columbus Police Department also said she would be extradited to Columbus at some point in the near future. After this point they said she would be provided with a court date.
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Public records show Harrell, the initial person of interest, is a resident of Ocilla, Georgia. She has at least two convictions for possession of methamphetamine on her record, including a felony possession charge where she was caught with between 28 and 199g of the dangerous drug.
Harrell was on parole for nine years between August 2007 and August 2016. She is not believed to have been charged in relation to the kidnapping at this time. Spires has at least one previous criminal conviction, a burglary charge that included breaking and entering at a residential home, according to department of corrections records.
According to the HighCourt only 1 out of every 10,000 missing children is not found alive. They said: “Luckily, the probability of recovering missing children in the USA alive is extremely high. In fact, studies found that 99.8% of missing children come home. Some were located, while others were returned home alive.”
“The FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing Person File has recorded a total of 87,438 active missing persons. Around 30,618 of these are juveniles. Some of these missing juveniles were miraculously found years later. But others met tragic fates, with many unsolved kidnappings in police reports.”
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