Toddler used as bait in possible abduction of woman

[caggie2]

(US based) On Thursday a woman, Carlee Russell, saw a toddler walking on the interstate outside Alabama, she called 911 to report it before stopping to help. Her car was found with the engine still running with her phone in and her smart watch. No missing toddler has been reported in the area.

Absolutely terrifying. It sounds to me most likely to be human trafficking? Poor, poor woman. Stopping to help a child in danger it makes you think doesn't it, I don't think I'd want to stop and help if I ever came across that situation now.

Thank goodness she made it home alive.

Lots of things about this seem 'off'.

Abductors using a toddler as bait - thats a busy road to try that on, how do you guarantee an intended target stops, presuming a pre-selected individual valuable for ransoming or trafficking, is targeted.

Presuming not targeted then - what do you do when one of the billionty people totally not the target victim, stops... how quickly would that attract attention - you'd have to pick a different road every time, as reports of 'I stopped for a wandering toddler and then some people ran out, grabbed it and ran off' come flooding in.

Again it is a super busy road, full of witnesses - no one saw any toddler, except Carlee.

I do not buy it at all.

Then she walks into her own home 48 hours later, is described as 'breathing but unresponsive' - I'd say walking and released from hospital in a matter of hours is significantly better than 'breathing but unresponsive'... has 'fought for her life' but... there appears no evidence of this (not to say there is no evidence, just how it appears currently).

Police do not appear to be looking for kidnappers or any missing child...

This screams hoax or scam, or mental health episode - whats happening to the over $60K donations, are they being refunded or not, it is not clear and who do they go to if not, and are those the only donations?

The local Alabama TV version of Crimestoppers has announced that they are returning to donors the $65k raised from viewers towards the search effort, and to help find the kidnappers and the child.

That's interesting, I wonder if the police have shared some information with then

The 'local gossip' (it was apparently referenced officially by the Fire Department, which was also involved for some reason, but I can't find a direct source for that as I can't access a lot of the Alabama news websites cos I'm in Europe, so I'll call it gossip for now) is that the lady in question has a substance misuse disorder and had lost her job that day. The police knew that she likely had not been kidnapped as witnesses had seen her going in and out of a motel seemingly of her own free will. She had also re-added her ex-boyfriend to her contacts (this is the guy who spoke out I think but not 100% sure) after he had previously been blocked and there was other phone and CCTV activity which led the police to believe they were dealing with a mental health issue not a kidnapping issue. Of course this did not mean that they let up on the search, a person suffering a mental health or substance misuse episode is also obviously very vulnerable.

As a recevered addict myself I feel for the lady, I know how substance misuse can lead you into situations which then spiral out of your control and take on a life of their own. I hope she gets the care she needs and that there is indeed no toddler out there in danger - it does not appear that there is, which is obviously very good news.

The more I read, the more it looks like a mental health wobble, perhaps misguided attempt to enact revenge or cause drama for the ex-boyfriend...

I hope she gets the help she needs and I feel for those who have been scared or worried for her, or by her actions.

I've just watched the press conference, some wacky stuff going on there

I think it’s really obvious this isn’t an abduction or human trafficking.

I’ve watched the press conference and it all sounds very made up. The Google searches before she was apparently ‘taken?’

I’m a black woman and will never stop advocating for other black women. But it’s really disappointing if she’s basically lied when so many black women go missing in America. How frustrating because I was even trying to defend her on this thread….

I’m just going to keep on watching for further updates but this is just shocking really

Whatever the truth, this is a sad case all round. There are no winners here.

I hope Carlee gets the help she needs.

The police chief said they searched her phone.
There were searches on it for “Amber alerts” and “how old do you have to be for an Amber alert?” (In the U.S., Amber alerts are public notifications of child abductions.)
Also, there was a search for the movie “Taken.”
The police chief also reported that Carlee was seen on surveillance camera at work concealing (or attempting to) a roll of toilet paper and (what sounded like) “a robe” as she left work.
The video was hard to hear at times.
She then was observed getting take-out and stopping in at Target and purchased snacks.
The food and snacks were observed in her vehicle - however, the items she removed from work were not.
The chief also said it was not apparent that any child was in the video from the road, but that they are continuing to evaluate.
He also said that they will continue their discussions with Carlee when she’s ready, and that they have offered but she has declined.
Oh - the chief said Carlee told them she was abducted by a white man with orange hair and a large bald spot and was placed in an 18-wheeler semi truck. She said she was blindfolded and that she could hear a woman talking and a baby crying.
She said they dropped her off in the woods near her home.
The chief seemed most troubled by the searches on her phone, but affirmed that the most important thing was that Carlee is home and safe.

This is really sad... whether it's deliberate attention seeking, or a mental health crisis ... women like Sherri Papini put the doubt in people's minds about missing women that could hinder them being found and made it harder for all missing women but Carlee has made it harder still for women of colour imo

I'm glad she is safe but disappointed for all women what I think the outcome is from these type of cases overall

I really don't know what to hope for outcome wise here... I'd never want to hope someone really was abducted or really does have serious mental health issues but that means hoping she just made it up for some malicious purpose and that too is awful.

I hope she and her family get the help she clearly needs, whatever actually happened but the only thing that is pretty clear now is she was not abducted by someone using a toddler as bait!

IF drugs were involved, then depending on what she was taking, she may well have believed she had been abducted or was in some kind of coercive situation. Drugs make life very messy and concepts like choice, free will, agency and even perceptions of reality become very wobbly.

I really hope this doesn’t get painted as a new Jussie Smollett situation, faking an attack for attention. I think the lady has a genuine and severe mental health crisis and I hope she gets meaningful help for that rather than being criminalised.

Her Google searches suggest that she pre-planned this, so I doubt she genuinely did believe she was kidnapped.

The mystery surrounding this is only attracting more attention. As are the parents interviews and statements telling people there was a kidnapper. The longer it goes on, the worse it looks.

There seem to be some evidence that she stole from her employer, stopped at a takeaway, the target and sat in the target car park for while.

and went she went missing she took the snacks she got at target with her.

I genuinely don’t believe she thought she had been kidnapped.

Carlee told them she was abducted by a white man with orange hair and a large bald spot

She was abducted by Ronald MacDonald??

Ronald MacDonald has a bald spot? 😱

Sometimes people do things without thinking through the wider implications and believe they'll get away with it and benefit themselves

There are people who falsely claim they have miscarriages, get pregnant, get raped, get assaulted, get abducted etc and it always makes it harder for people who actually cope with these traumas for real

But there's usually reasons why, so as distasteful and anger provoking as it is and I'm not trying to excuse it but understand it- people who make false claims often do it because they can't cope with a situation they're unable to control and attempting to... like a partner trying to leave them, or not receiving enough attention from their loved ones so they want some sort of big upsetting event to receive sympathy or attention for that will force people to give them the emotional support they need

It's clear she hadn't really thought through what she was doing very well- as much as it may have been a manipulative way to try getting something she personally thought she couldn't cope without, there's no way anyone sees a toddler 6 football fields (600 yards) away in the dark... you might see a shape you interpreted as one but you couldn't be sure that's what you'd seen ... and she seems to have overestimated her ability to be believable massively- not thinking her phone searches would be explored and probably never expecting the wider public to know some of the details that have been revealed

It's so incredibly sad... a whole community and police force who actually were fucking amazing in their response to Carlee's "abduction" and the amount of energy some will have expended in that emotionally and physically draining themselves worrying about a woman from their community as well as what it meant for their own safety and their families... its natural to think twice after someone betrays you and you went through that process unnecessarily when it's the next time. I hope the police would do exactly the same and know professionally not to risk thinking twice ... but in missing cases, police especially need the engagement of the community

Ah no I’m thinking of Pennywise the Clown in IT.

sorry, as you were

😂😂😂

I really hope this doesn’t get painted as a new Jussie Smollett situation, faking an attack for attention. I think the lady has a genuine and severe mental health crisis and I hope she gets meaningful help for that rather than being criminalised.

Same here

Theres been a press conference where she released a statement admitting she lied. There was no kidnapping. There was no toddler. No human trafficking

No decision on charges though.

I am not convinced this was a mental health episode. Though I don’t think people who are entirely well would do this, but I don’t think she was in crisis and believed it happened at all.

One black woman having a MH crisis, or even one black woman spinning a lie, shouldn't reflect in any way on all the black women who are victims of crime. Any more than the Papini case reflected badly on white women who are victims of crime.

It's awful that we have to think that way about media representations of our particular minorities.

The boundaries between invention and MH crisis are quite blurry though, aren't they?