Two toddlers abducted from the Florida panhandle were found Sunday night abandoned in a park in Wisconsin.
Police say 2-year-old Dekarsen Middleton and 1-year-old Delyla Middleton have been reunited with their family, who drove 17 hours from Florida to retrieve them, and a close family friend and her boyfriend have been arrested.
“We’ve been on the road since 4 o’clock yesterday. We drove 17 hours to get here,” Tina Leach, the children’s grandmother, told WISN. “We would have walked if we had to.”
According to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office in Panama City, Florida, the children’s mother told them she’d left the children in the care of Adalyn Burkett, 18, overnight on Friday.
“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,” the sheriff’s office said.
But she didn’t. Instead, Burkett and her boyfriend, 22-year-old Marquan Edwards, took off for Milwaukee, 1,000 miles away, where he had family.
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“We never thought she would have done something like that. We trusted her,” Leach said. “It just shows you who you can’t trust.”
The children were found at a park late Sunday afternoon, police said. They were not harmed.
At about the same time, WISN said, US Marshals arrested Burkett and Edwards at a home in Milwaukee. They face charges in Florida for taking the children and their mother’s car, and Milwaukee police are investigating them for abandoning the children in the park.
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[Featured image: Adalyn Burkett and Marquan Edwards/Bay County Sheriff’s Office]
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