Kidnapped 4-Year-Old Found Safe in Missouri

(July 7) -- A 4-year-old Missouri girl believed to have been kidnapped while playing with her older brother in their front yard has been found wandering around a strip mall parking lot more than 80 miles from her home, and a relative said this morning that she was unharmed.

Police say they got a call just before 10 p.m. Tuesday reporting a young child wandering around the parking lot of a closed car wash in Fenton, a suburb of St. Louis. They confirmed her identity as Alisa Maier and then took her to a hospital as a precaution, according to several St. Louis-area TV stations.

Her parents traveled to the hospital overnight for a happy reunion, NBC News reported.

"They were just so happy," Alisa's grandfather Roy Harrison told NBC's "Today" show this morning. "There was a lot of smiling."

He said Alisa is doing well.

"As far as I know she's doing just fine," he told NBC's "Today" show. "She's not harmed. It's a very traumatic situation and they just want to check her out really well."

Alisa and her parents left Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis at about 7:30 a.m. today after being checked out for nearly three hours, hospital spokesman Bob Davidson told The Associated Press.

"They all looked really tired, like they'd been through a lot, but they also looked overwhelmingly overjoyed at being reunited," he said. "Alisa was sitting in her mother's lap in the emergency room and her mother had her arms wrapped around Alisa like she was never going to let her go."

The person who took her cut Alisa's hair to disguise her, NBC reported, adding that police got a call from someone at the car wash saying there was a boy in the parking lot.

The girl's 5-year-old brother, Blake, was the only witness to her abduction around 8 p.m. Monday in their small Mississippi River town of Louisiana, Mo. The boy was able to give only a vague description of the alleged kidnapper, a white male in his late teens or 20s with dark hair. The boy told authorities the stranger drove up to their yard in a four-door sedan and ordered his sister into the car, before speeding away.

Harrison said on "Today" that the person who took her "has to come to the realization that he has a problem. And he has to step up and take responsibility for that and turn yourself in."

The Maiers live within view of Route 79, the main north-south highway toward St. Louis. Authorities speculated that someone driving by could have seen the children playing in their yard, snatched Alisa and then fled quickly into busy highway traffic. An Amber Alert was issued Monday night, with overhead signs on Route 79 flashing a missing child alert about Alisa.

When Blake ran inside and told his mother, she jumped into the family's minivan to chase the car, but it was too late.

"She was scared to death," neighbor Anita McKlevis said of the girl's mother, Kimberly Harrison. "Her voice was shaky; she was just beside herself," McKlevis told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Since then, up to 100 law enforcement officers, including 30 FBI agents, scoured the Maiers' hometown along with dozens of family friends and volunteers searching a nearby creek and driving back roads.

The girl was found just hours after several hundred people gathered in a riverside park near her home for a candlelight vigil to pray for her safe return.

"Give her strength, Lord. Give her comfort," the Rev. Terry Cook of the Pike County Blessed Hope Church told the crowd, according to the Post-Dispatch. "Let her know her mommy and her daddy want her back."

Alisa's father, David Maier, also spoke briefly at the vigil.

"I just want to thank you all for all your support," Maier told the crowd amid hugs and tears from other relatives. "Thank you for everything you do to bring my little girl home," he said, according to Fox News affiliate KTVI.

Police said they're still looking for a suspect in a dark sedan, and will ask Alisa to recount whatever details she can about him, after she's reunited with relatives. Before the girl was found safe, her great-grandmother, Mary Foiles, made a plea to the kidnapper.

"Bring that baby back. If you're scared to bring her back, put her somewhere where you know she'll be safe," Foiles told KTVI. "They're going to catch him. I pray to God and God answers my prayers. They're going to catch him, maybe not right away but they will catch him. And I just wonder if that man knows he's going to burn in hell."