TBI: Missing Tenn. girl found safe; uncle in custody

HAWKINS COUNTY, Tenn. -- A missing Tennessee girl who authorities say was abducted by her uncle has been found safe, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation confirmed Thursday afternoon.

According to the TBI, 9-year-old Carlie Marie Trent of Rogersville was reported missing May 4 after a non-custodial uncle, Gary Simpson, signed her out of school under false pretenses.

The TBI reported via its Facebook page that Trent was found safe in Hawkins County, the same northeastern Tennessee county from which she vanished. Her uncle is in custody, the TBI said. An Amber Alert that had been issued for the child was canceled.

CBS affiliate WVLT reports the arrest came after investigators responded to a report of a sighting of the two.

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn told a news conference that Donnie Lawson and Baptist minister Roger Carpenter found Simpson and Carlie in a remote wooded area only accessible by all-terrain vehicles.

Gwyn said Carpenter held Simpson at gunpoint while Lawson called the police. Gwyn called the men heroes for deciding to check the remote area after authorities had issued a call for help finding Carlie.

"Carlie is safe tonight because of an entire community pulling together and working with law enforcement to bring Carlie home," Gwyn said, according to WVLT.

Gwyn says there are no indications that Carlie was harmed, but she was taken to a hospital as a precaution to be examined.

Before the development, the girl's father told the station Simpson was "obsessed" with the girl.

Carlie Trent had previously been in the custody of Simpson and his wife, who both lived near the girl's biological father, said Josh DeVine, a spokesman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. However the father regained custody of her back in 2015, a TBI spokesman said. It is not clear why Carlie was living with the uncle or why she was returned to the father. Rob Johnson, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, said in an email that he could not provide any details because of confidentiality laws.

On Tuesday, law enforcement officials said Simpson bought a little girl's bathing suit, a pack of underwear, two bottles of nail polish, two tubes of women's colored lip gloss, and other items, before he fled with the child. Video surveillance released Tuesday shows the girl with her uncle in a checkout line at a Save-A-Lot store. Simpson can be seen purchasing large quantities of toilet paper, food and other items.

The spokesman said that based on the way he had been stocking up, it appeared Simpson had no intention of bringing her home anytime soon.

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