SHIRLEY — A 20-month-old toddler is back home with her grandparents, her legal guardians, following an ordeal involving the non-custodial parents.
Shirley Police Department officers, with the assistance from the Indiana State Police, Hancock County Sheriff’s Department, and several surrounding law enforcement agencies, were able to locate the biological parents and the child around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Police received a call around 8 p.m. Wednesday from the grandparents, saying she had been taken from the 600 block of Pennsylvania Street in Shirley.
The grandfather told police the child’s mother was willing to return the child, but she would not inform police where the child was.
"We didn’t really know what was going on with the child," Lieutenant Joshua Miller of the Shirley Police Department said.
The grandfather told police the mother was willing to meet a police officer at a gas station to hand the child over around 8:30 p.m., but the exchange didn’t happen.
The grandparents were recently granted legal custody of the child, police said. However, the parents said they were not aware of the legal order. When they didn’t show up at the appointed time, police identified the incident as a child abduction.
"They wouldn’t help us out and tell us where they were at and that’s why we had so many units out looking for them," Miller said.
The mother was listed as having an address in Indianapolis. That’s where Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers found the child and her parents about an hour later.
While documents show the parents were taken into custody at the time the child was found, they have not been charged, Miller said. The investigation is still under way, Miller said.
