Kidnapped child, missing a year, found safe after TV report
PALATKA, Fla. -Authorities say a 3-year-old girl reported kidnapped by her mother more than a year ago in South Florida has been found with her mother about 280 miles away.
Multiple news outlets report that 23-year-old Megan E. Everett was arrested by the Putnam County, Florida Sheriff's Office on Monday when a tip came in because her story was featured on the CNN program "The Hunt with John Walsh," on Sunday.
The girl's father, 27-year-old Robert Baumann of Davie, says investigators told him the tip came from a landlord who was renting out a property to Everett in Palatka, east of Gainesville.
According to the FBI, the child was reported missing May 2014, when Everett failed to return her daughter to Baumann as directed in their custody agreement.
CBS Miami reports the child has been reunited with her father.
"Long awaited day, it's been over a year. Kind of just caught me by surprise," Baumann told the station. "I definitely thought that Megan was no longer in the state."
He said he would tell his daughter "I love her and that I miss her and take it from there. Hopefully, she remembers me."
A federal court filing shows Everett left a note for her boyfriend at the time, saying she was taking her daughter away because she didn't want "them" to "vaccinate her" and "brainwash her," the station reports.
"You are a great dad," she wrote to her boyfriend, with the word "great" underlined, reported the Sun Sentinel. "If I let them take her and vaccinate her and brainwash her, I wouldn't be doing what's right. I cannot let a judge tell me how my daughter should be raised. We will miss you. But I had to leave."
Baumann said when he went to pick up his daughter, Everett's boyfriend at the time told him the two didn't live there anymore and he slammed the door in his face, reports the station.
Everett faces a kidnapping charge in state court as well as a federal count of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, reports the station.