Last Thursday evening, Alabama resident Carlee Russell, 25, seemingly disappeared out of thin air after calling 911 to file a report on an alleged male toddler who she claimed was walking alone on the side of Interstate 459 South. She told dispatchers that she wanted to check on and presumably rescue the child.
Here’s the audio of that call:
Thankfully, Russell returned home late Saturday night on foot. Though she was disheveled, according to her parents, as though something had happened to her, police have since revealed new information that calls into question her story that she was abducted by a male and female.
According to reports on the timeline of events regarding Russell’s alleged disappearance, after she disconnected from 911 she also placed a call to her brother’s girlfriend, who Russell’s mother, Talitha Russell, said had a short conversation with her before hearing Carlee Russell scream after supposedly speaking to the child to find out if he was okay.
Police arrived shortly thereafter, and located Russell’s car and belongings but not her nor the alleged toddler.
“Carlee’s 911 call remains the only timely report of a child on the interstate,” the Hoover PD wrote on Facebook.
According to authorities, a video of Russell stopping her car exists and is still being analyzed.
In an update to this story, however, the Hoover PD held a news conference Wednesday afternoon, where police chief Nicholas Derzis detailed, among other things, searches Russell did on her cellphone prior to her calling 911:
Carlee Russell, the Alabama woman who returned home on Saturday after she went missing for two days, searched for Amber Alerts and the movie “Taken” on her phone before her disappearance, Hoover Police Department Chief Nicholas Derzis told reporters Wednesday.
Russell also made searches related to bus tickets in the hours before she went missing, he said.
“There were other searches on Carlee’s phone that appeared to shed some light on her mindset,” Derzis said, adding he would not share them out of privacy.
[…]
“We want to talk in facts and I do think it’s highly, highly unusual to the day that someone gets kidnapped that several — seven hours or eight hours before that — that they’re searching the internet, Googling the movie ‘Taken’ about an abduction. I find that very, very strange,” Derzis said.
In other words, it sounds like they don’t believe her story. Watch:
I have to think that at this point that the police also have video of what Russell did after she got out of the car, but again are not releasing it out of respect for her family who in an interview with the “Today Show” Tuesday repeatedly said there were things they could not discuss and at one point mentioned the police were looking for her “abductor”:
“Carlee has given detectives her statement so that they can continue to pursue her abductor,” Talitha Russell read from the statement.
When asked if she believes her daughter’s alleged abductor is still out there, she responded: “Absolutely.”
Watch:
The Today Show has since updated their report in light of the Hoover PD presser.
On Twitter, some have compared Russell’s story to that of disgraced actor Jussie Smollett’s, though there doesn’t appear to be a racial/MAGA component to this one based on what we’ve been told by her family and law enforcement.
Whatever the case may be, best to keep Russell and her family in her prayers because whether she was kidnapped or staged it, that family is going to be going through a rough time in the coming weeks and months.
Flashback->> Watch: Florida Sheriff Billy Woods Goes off on Media, Dem Gun Control Angles After Fatal Shootings