After an Amber Alert
and manhunt, a teen is found and her stepgrandfather is facing multiple charges.
A convicted felon is accused of dragging his unclothed stepgranddaughter into the woods in the middle of the night and raping her, according to the Orange County Sheriff ’s Office.
Darrell Mills, 50, is facing a number of charges, including sexual battery on a child under 12 and kidnapping a child younger than the age of 13.
The 11-year-old girl’s disappearance led to a massive manhunt Sunday in the Apopka area and the issuance of an Amber Alert. A citizen saw the suspect and girl and flagged down a deputy, ending the eight-hour search.
“I want to thank the community for [coming] together to help find her but most of all I want to thank the police officer[s] who [were] out there helping to find my baby,” said the girl’s father, who the Orlando Sentinel is not naming to protect the victim’s identity.
The father said on Facebook he was livid hearing what his daughter went through, telling the Orlando Sentinel “I hope he get[s] a life sentence cause my daughter didn’t deserve that.”
It started about 1:50 a.m. when Mills woke up, got out of bed and told his wife he was going to get food, an arrest affidavit said.
He was “drunk and upset over his daughter’s death,” the report states. The victim’s father said Mills attended his own daughter’s funeral Saturday.
His wife went to check on Mills in their Elderton Drive home in the Lake Opal Estates neighborhood when she saw her granddaughter’s door was locked. His wife picked the lock and saw Mills in the girl’s room, the arrest report states.
Mills then dragged the girl by the arm out from the garage of the home and into the woods, the report states.
Deputies say the girl was naked from the waist down and was screaming.
The girl told deputies Mills came into her room with a knife and threatened to kill her, the report states. He performed oral sex on
the victim, deputies said.
Then, after dragging her from the house, he forced her into a green Chevrolet SUV, where he raped her, the arrest report states.
Deputies were first called about 2:15 a.m. to what they thought was a verbal argument at the home, agency spokeswoman Jane Watrel said.
When deputies arrived about 10 minutes later, they quickly determined that Mills, who lived at the home with the victim’s biological grandmother, had abducted the girl.
About 100 law-enforcement officials from the sheriff’s office, Apopka Police Department and the Florida Highway Patrol responded to the scene and set up a command post at nearby Wheatley Elementary School.
Detectives pored through the woods and the neighborhood surrounding the home. A helicopter landed at the school and took off several times throughout the day.
The sheriff ’s office sent out a reverse 911 call to the neighborhood, informing citizens of the incident, and an Amber Alert was issued at 7:33 a.m.
Three hours later, a citizen saw the pair and flagged down a deputy.
“It’s so important for our citizens in Orange County to get involved when we have a case like this,” said Orange County Maj. Rick Meli, who oversees the Criminal Investigations Division. “We did get flagged down by a citizen who told us where they were … it’s so important to law enforcement when citizens get involved.”
Television footage from Orlando Sentinel news partner Fox 35 shows Mills — shirtless, barefoot and wearing tan shorts — walking into the Sheriff ’s Office with handcuffs on. He didn’t say anything.
Mills has been incarcerated eight times dating back to 1989, Department of Corrections records show.
He was sentenced to five years in prison in 1996 on a slew of charges including grand theft of a motor vehicle, stealing a firearm and stealing a concealed firearm.
Three months later he was found guilty of smuggling contraband into a county detention facility and escaping, records show.
Most recently, he was sentenced to five years prison in 2007 for grand theft of a motor vehicle in Marion County, records show.