A man and woman are in custody after deputies say they lured an 18-year-old woman from her Arkansas home to a cabin near Eatonville.
On Thursday, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department received a request to help the Mississippi County Sheriff’s Department in Luxora, Arkansas about the disappearance of an 18-year-old woman with autism and special needs.
Investigators said the girl was missing from her Blytheville, Arkansas home Saturday morning.
Mississippi County detectives had determined before the woman disappeared, she received and replied to a text message from a Washington State number.
Deputies said the victim had been contacted by a man in his 50s from the Eatonville area, who they said had reportedly tried to befriend more than 8,000 other children on social media.
Before the woman disappeared, deputies said the man and had flown from Washington to Tennessee with an adult female companion. The suspects rented a car with fake ID’s, then drove to the woman’s home in Arkansas, where they lured her with a possible sexual motivation, deputies said.
The three drove to Washington and detectives linked the suspects to an address in the Eatonville area.
Mississippi County deputies obtained arrest warrants for the 56-year-old man and his 28-year-old companion for kidnapping of an incompetent person and were able to determine a possible address, where the suspects and victim could be found.
On Thursday afternoon, authorities went to a home in the 39100 block of Ski Park Road East near Eatonville and took the suspects into custody.
The victim was located and safe inside the home. The FBI flew the woman back to Arkansas Friday morning and she was reunited with her family.
Deputies said the man’s 14-year-old son was also found safe in the home and he was taken to a relative’s house in King County.
The man and woman were booked into the Pierce County Jail for their kidnapping warrants and are awaiting extradition to Arkansas.
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