10 March 2023 , 15:55
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A girl who went missing almost five years ago after being kidnapped from a shopping mall in the US has been found in Mexico.
Aranza Maria Ochoa Lopez was abducted by her biological mum, Esmeralda Lopez-Lopez, in 2018 during a supervised visit.
The two had been at a mall in Vancouver, Washington state, US.
She was found in Michoacán, a state in western Mexico, in February and has now been returned to the US.
Officials have not yet released further details about the missing girl, such as how she was found.
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Her biological mum was arrested in September 2019 in Puebla, Mexico, but the search for the girl continued.
She pleaded guilty in 2021 to second-degree kidnapping, robbery and first-degree custodial interference.
Esmeralda Lopez-Lopez was arrested in September 2019 (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children)According to Richard A. Collodi, a special agent in charge of the FBI's Seattle field office, law enforcement never gave up on finding the girl.
He said: "For more than four years, the FBI and our partners did not give up on Aranza.
"Our concern now will be supporting Aranza as she begins her reintegration into the US."
The agency had offered a $10,000 reward for information that would help them with the search.
Lake Patzcuaro in the state of Michoacan, Mexico (Getty Images)The investigation saw Vancouver Police in Washington, law enforcement in Mexico and the FBI all work to bring the girl home.
The vast majority of abducted children are kidnapped by family members, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Only one per cent of missing children cases are abductions by people not within the family.
In February a girl who had been missing for a year was found.
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The girl was seized from a mall in Vancouver, Washington (Getty Images)The 14-year-old girl who was reported missing in 2021 was reunited with her dad after police found her alive and pregnant in a wardrobe.
Police were tipped off by a member of the public to search a home in Port Huron, Michigan and were shocked to find her bundled into a wardrobe on Tuesday.
But despite the tip off, the search was not easy and the occupants of the house "vehemently denied that they had seen her" and gave the officers some "bogus information".
Deputy Marshal Robert Watson said: "She was pretty upset, she was crying and she was pretty scared. She wasn't sure what was going to be happening to her."
The FBI worked with other local law enfrocement agencies (Getty Images)He told the Detroit Free Press: "They wouldn't let us in. They wouldn't allow us to speak with anyone in the house, which were huge red flags for us. The lady said, 'Come back with a search warrant.' So we did."
Then they found her in the hallway wardrobe, just metres away from where two men were watching television while claiming they didn't know where she was.
She was later taken to hospital for a wellness exam, where she was found to be pregnant, Mr Watson said.