The mother of theAlabama woman who vanished after calling 911to report a toddler missing along the highway last week says “hopefully” police are chasing down a suspect, but investigators say they’ve found no evidence there was a child on the road.
The Hoover Police Department said in a Tuesday statement they are still “working to determine what happened” to Carlethia “Carlee” Nichole Russell between the time she made the call on Thursday and when she returned home on foot Saturday night. Meanwhile, her mother says there’s an “abductor” still at large.
“She definitely fought for her life,” her mother, Talitha Robinson-Russell, told NBC’sTODAYon Tuesday. “There were moments when she physically had to fight for her life, and there were moments when she had to mentally fight for her life.”
Russell, a 25-year-old nursing student, called 911 on Thursday night when she driving home from work and she said she noticed a toddler-aged boy in a diaper walking along the side of I-459, according to police.
Hoover Police Dept/Twitter
Carlee Russell.HOOVER (AL) POLICE DEPARTMENT
HOOVER (AL) POLICE DEPARTMENT
Traffic camera footage from last Thursday shows what police believe to be Russell’s red Mercedes slowing down along the highway with its blinkers on before making a stop. Russell then made her call to 911 to tell police about the boy walking alone alongside the interstate.
Her mother Talitha then says Russell called her brother’s girlfriend and was on the phone with her when things went awry.
“My son’s girlfriend heard her asking the child, ‘Are you OK? She never heard the child say anything but then she heard our daughter scream,’’ Talitha had toldAL.com. “All you hear on her phone is background noise from the interstate.”
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Russell disappeared for what Hoover Police say was 49 hours before she turned up back at her parents’ home, where she also lives.
“Detectives have obtained surveillance video from Russell’s neighborhood which shows her walking down the sidewalk alone prior to her arrival at her residence,” police said in the statement, adding that medics were then dispatched to the house after getting a 911 call from the family that said Russell was “unresponsive but breathing.”
“When first responders arrived on scene, they found Ms. Russell conscious and speaking and she was transported in that condition,” the department said. “She was later treated and released from a local hospital.”
Russell has not made a public statement about her disappearance and only briefly spoke with police “once” before she was taken to the hospital Saturday night, the department told PEOPLE this week. Hoover Police say they “are waiting for her to be made available to obtain a more detailed statement about the sequence of events during that time frame.”
Russell’s family asked for privacy in astatement posted to Facebook, which said they had “not slept for 3 nights and we are mentally and physically exhausted.”
source: people.com
