The Associated Press is reporting that the police in Phoenix are now saying that a 5-year-old girl who has been missing for six days has been kidnapped — otherwise they would have found her by now. Jahessye Shockley was last seen by her three older siblings last Tuesday at her Glendale, Ariz., home while her mother was reportedly running an errand.
Police told the AP that they believe the child was taken through the front door. Beyond that, they have no suspects or evidence.
"If it was just her walking away, we would have found her by now," Glendale police Sgt. Brent Coombs told the AP. "Obviously she's not with us. Somebody knows something or somebody has interacted with her and put her in a place, and we just haven't found her yet."
Coombs said the girl's mother is not a suspect despite comments she made to reporters.
"They're treating me like that — the interrogations and the way I've been spoken to," Jerice Hunter, Jahessy's mother, said Monday in an interview with the AP. "(They're) very disrespectful."
Coombs said police have treated Hunter no differently than any other mother of a missing child. They conducted an initial interview as well as follow-ups because "people remember things, details, as time goes by."
He said Hunter might believe she's a suspect because "emotions are speaking."
Meanwhile, Jahessye's grandmother told The Arizona Republic on Sunday that Child Protective Services removed Hunter's three other children from her home and put them in foster care.
We hope that the family is relentless about keeping little Jahessye's story in the media. It's the best way to make sure she is found in a timely manner. The longer she is missing, the harder it will be to find her. How someone walked out the front door with a 5-year-old child without being noticed is beyond us. Neighbors and passersby didn't see anything? Someone saw something, and someone needs to say something soon.
Read more at the Washington Post.
In other news: L.A. County Jails: Beatings and Cover-Ups.