11 children rescued from ‘filthy’ hideout
> Sheriff says they ‘looked like third-world refugees’
WASHINGTON: Police say 11 children aged one to 15 were rescued in New Mexico after officers raided a dilapidated compound occupied by armed men.
Two men were arrested after police found them and the children in what one officer called “the saddest living conditions and poverty I have seen”, as part of the operation connected to a months-long search for an abducted three-year-old, according to New Mexico’s Taos County Sheriff’s Office.
The investigation kicked off late last year on the opposite side of the country in Jonesboro, Georgia, where 39-year-old Siraj Wahhaj was accused of kidnapping his toddler – who was ultimately not found.
The boy’s mother told police her child, who she said suffered from seizures along with developmental and cognitive delays, went to the park with his father last December and never returned.
On Aug 2, Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe of Taos County issued a search warrant describing “a makeshift compound surrounded by tires and an earthen berm” in a subdivision in the rural community of Amalia, where Wahhaj and a man named Lucas Morten were thought to be in hiding.
The FBI had provided information and surveillance on the spot but “didn’t feel there was enough probable cause to get on the property”, Hogrefe said.
“That all changed for me when a message was forwarded to us from a Georgia detective that we reasonably believed came from someone at the compound – the message sent to a third party simply said in part ‘we are starving and need food and water’.”
On Aug 3, officers kicked off the operation, discovering hidden beneath New Mexico’s scrubland the two men with an AR-15 rifle, five loaded 30-round magazines and four loaded pistols.
The men had refused to follow verbal direction, police said, adding the raid went without major incident or injuries even though Wahhaj needed to be “taken down”.
Police officers found more ammo rounds in the ramshackle hideout, which they described as “a small travel trailer buried in the ground covered by plastic with no water, plumbing, or electricity”.
“The only food we saw were a few potatoes and a box of rice in the filthy trailer,” Hogrefe said.
“But what was most surprising, and heartbreaking was when the team located a total of five adults and 11 children that looked like third world country refugees.
“Not only with no food or fresh water, but with no shoes, personal hygiene and basically dirty rags for clothing.”
Morten was charged with harbouring a fugitive while Wahhaj was booked without bond on his Georgia warrant for child abduction. – AFP