‘Words cannot express our emotions right now’
Mother of missing girl thanks police, community and ‘all of Canada’ for help
After a night of terror and chaos for a Saskatchewan family, an early-morning phone call to police ended an Amber Alert and resulted in six-year-old Emma O’Keeffe being returned home safely.
O’Keeffe was in her family ’s vehicle on Sunday around 5 p.m. when the Mercedes SUV was stolen from a North Battleford strip mall.
Following the issuing of the Amber Alert and a three-province search overnight, O’Keeffe was found in the vehicle Monday around 6:45 a.m.
Alison O’Keeffe, Emma’s mother, took to Facebook during the Amber Alert to ask for help. On Monday, she shared a message of thanks to those who helped her family.
“Words cannot express our emotions right now,” O’Keeffe said in the Facebook post. “Emma is safe at home sleeping soundly, peacefully, surrounded by all the love in the world. The relief is indescribable.
“We need to thank every single person that was out looking for her, sending messages of love and prayer and every emergency member that dedicated many hours to
help find Emma. The whole community and all of Canada came to her rescue.
“We are beyond grateful. We have an amazing support system here and Patrick and I appreciate every single one of you. Our hearts are full again.”
Saskatchewan RCMP Cpl. Rob King said Monday at a news conference that the six-year-old was taken by ambulance to hospital and released within hours after being found. O’Keeffe has autism and epilepsy, and is non-verbal. RCMP on Sunday said she requires medication every 12 hours or risks potentially-fatal health conditions.
Workers in the area where she was found on Monday spotted the vehicle and immediately phoned police, King said. The vehicle was located inside North Battleford’s city limits in an industrial area roughly two kilometres away from where the it was taken, said King. RCMP are still looking for suspects in the case.
“The only information that I have is she was conscious when she was found,” said King.
He said it was not known where the vehicle was driven after it was stolen or how many people were inside.
“Our primary focus was simply finding the vehicle and returning
the girl to her family,” King said.
He said the Amber Alert was successful, as the workers who found the vehicle recognized it from the alerts.
While the search had a happy outcome, King said RCMP had to issue a second alert through the SaskAlert System. The alert was only issued on its second attempt.
King says the focus of the investigation remains on who was responsible for taking the vehicle and not why the child was left alone in a running car in the first place.
“We don’t know what happened from when the car was taken to when the car was found. We don’t know the direction of travel. We don’t know where it travelled. We don’t know how many people were in the car at the time while it was driving around,” King said.
“It’s more like it was a stolen vehicle of opportunity and there happened to be a child in the back seat, but that is speculation at this point.”
He said investigators will go where the evidence leads them.
“Today the focus was finding her and getting her back. The focus now shifts to finding who is responsible for taking the vehicle in the first place.”