15-year-old girl found safe after report that she was abducted in Dolton, resulting in AMBER Alert
CHICAGO (CBS) -- An AMBER Alert was issued hours after a teenage girl went missing in a car that sped off from Dolton up the Dan Ryan Expressway, but the teen was later found safe and was not forthcoming about what happened.
Dolton police said around 2:40 p.m. Monday, their officers were called to 142nd street and Woodlawn Avenue for a possible kidnapping.
The father of a 14-year-old girl told officers his daughter had texted him saying she was outside a White Castle in Dolton in a car with people she didn't know. The man said his daughter told him the people in the car also said they wanted money, police said.
The man found the car and his daughter at the White Castle himself, and tried to open the door of the car, police said. At that point, the car sped off at a high rate of speed.
Dolton police spotted the car and began pursing it, but lost sight of the car on the Dan Ryan Expressway at 87th Street. At that location, the fleeing vehicle – a 2005 black Ford 500 – sideswiped another car and pushed it into the side of a squad car belonging to Illinois State Police, who were also involved in the pursuit.
The trooper in the cruiser was taken to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police were eventually forced to end the chase when the suspect drove into a nearby neighborhood.
Police later learned that the teenage girl actually did know at least one person with whom she was in the car. But because the girl did not immediately turn up, Dolton police requested an AMBER Alert.
The AMBER Alert was broadcast around 11 p.m.
The FBI and Chicago Police joined in the search for the girl, and they eventually found the Ford and the teenage girl – along with two people she knew – in the 13100 block of South Champlain Avenue in the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city's Far South Side.
The girl was released to her parents, while the two other people were arrested.
When the girl was questioned by detectives, she was not forthcoming with information, police said.
