Moment abducted toddler siblings aged 2 and 1 are reunited with grandma after being kidnapped

Footage shows the moment two toddlers were reunited with their doting grandmother after they were kidnapped last week, and found unattended more than 1,000 miles away in an empty playground.

Abducted by their 18-year-old babysitter and her boyfriend in Florida Friday, Delyla and Dekarsen Middleton, aged 1 and 2 respectively, were located by cops in Wisconsin Sunday – marking the end to a massive search that traversed state lines.

Officers who came across the kids, who live with their mother in Callaway, said they were abandoned but left unharmed – leading Dekarsen and Delyla’s family to drive through the night for an emotional reunion with the two.

Footage filmed Monday shows the heartfelt homecoming in full – with the children’s grandmother, Tina Leach, and aunt seen rushing through the doors of a Milwaukee child protection agency, reemerging clutching the two youngsters.

Not present was the children’s mother – the one to report the pair missing Saturday. 

She made the call after family friend Adalyn Burkett, failed to return the children after a sitting stint that was supposed to be overnight. She and her beau are now in custody in Milwaukee after being cuffed Monday, cops said.

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A frantic Leach, accompanied by her own daughter Aleia, was seen rushing toward the Wisconsin CPS center during the heart-wrenching encounter Monday – which was captured by local outlet 12 News after the case commanded national attention.

‘Ready to see my babies.’ the matriarch replied without hesitation – and without breaking stride – when asked how she was feeling while on her way to the CPS building.

It was around this time US Marshals – who oversaw the  sprawling search for the kids – arrested Burkett and her 22-year-old beau, Marquan Edwards, at an unspecified home in Milwaukee Monday. 

The couple allegedly stole a car belonging to Leach’s other daughter – the kids’ unnamed mother – to make the cross-country trip, an excursion that Leach later theorized to 12 News was made with the intent of reaching Edwards’ family.

Once reunited with the members of her clan, a visibly distraught Leach lamented the ordeal she and relatives went through the past several days – while revealing she drove for almost a day straight after getting the call telling her the kids were all right.

‘We’ve been on the road since 4 o’clock yesterday,’ Leach told the station while clutching young Delyla and tearing up.

‘We drove 17 hours to get here. We would have walked if we had to.’

The drive from Florida’s Panhandle, meanwhile, is not an easy one – measured at roughly 1,020 miles of often rough land that over the weekend was experiencing a surge of storms that killed at least three.

That said, even after cops confirmed two suspects as close family friend Burkett and her boyfriend, Leach and other relatives made the trip.

Now in police custody and awaiting extradition, the pair are now facing charges for not only kidnapping, but taking Leach’s daughter’s 1998 Ford Explorer as well. 

Leach on Monday remarked to 12 News how the pair – who both have ties to Cream City – ‘Took our babies from Florida and along with my daughter’s truck.’

She added that Burkett’s ‘boyfriend had family members up here,’ while aunt Aleia alleged the babysitter had been in the Milwaukee foster care system as recent as last year, before making her way to Florida.

‘And she was in foster care here before she turned 18,’ the younger Leach said. 

Florida officials are now probing the pair for a possible motive, while cops in Wisconsin are investigating the circumstances that led the two to abandon the kids in a park near North 28th Street and West Clarke Street.

The Bay County, Florida Sheriff’s Office – the force who first identified the two suspects – described some of the still shrouded circumstances that predated the tots’ abduction Monday after the family was made whole again.

The said: ‘The mother reported that Burkett was supposed to babysit her two children overnight. 

‘The mother also allowed Burkett to use her vehicle for the night with the agreement that Burkett would return the vehicle the morning of June 24th.’

However, the couple would never return – spurring the children’s mom to phone cops Saturday morning.

Investigators later confirmed that Burkett and her beau then carted the kids several hundred miles north, before ultimately leaving them at the abandoned park sometime Sunday.

By Sunday evening, cops in Milwaukee stumbled across the two toddlers unharmed and alone, and immediately took them in. 

Within hours, they linked the brother and sister to the missing person’s case more than 1,000 miles away, and quickly phoned the family with the good news.

The update was enough to spur Leach to make the same drive Sunday night well into Monday morning, so that she could personally pick up her lost grandkids.

As for the kids abductor, supposedly a ‘friend’ of the family, she remains incarcerated in Milwaukee with her boyfriend, who both face kidnapping and car theft charges in Florida.

No charges against the pair have been filed in Wisconsin, but that could soon change – as investigators continue to look into the kids being left unattended.

Leach said of the 18-year-old suspect: ‘We never thought she would have done something like that. We trusted her.

‘It just shows you who you can’t trust.’ 

The Milwakee Police Department said Tuesday that they will be referring any prospective charges to the city’s DA Office in the coming days. Their investigation, as of 4pm, is still ongoing.

Leach told reporters Monday of her desire to bring the kids home: ‘I’m excited! I’m happy! I’m ready to get them home to their momma.’