Photo:HOOVER (AL) POLICE DEPARTMENT
HOOVER (AL) POLICE DEPARTMENT
Angela Harris, whose daughter Aniah Blanchard was abducted and murdered in 2020, says she has zero regrets for leading the charge to findCarlee Russelland bring her home safely.
Harris has made it her mission to help other families search for their missing loved ones and she says that she would help search for Russell all over again in a heartbeat despite feeling “shocked” days after hearing facts from Hoover police in Alabama that has cast doubt on Russell’s abduction story.
Russell, 25, mysteriously vanished for 49 hours from Hoover, Ala., before reappearing back at her parents' house.During a press conference last week, local police didn’t say Russell’s alleged kidnapping was a hoax, but called her behavior and internet search activity in the days leading up to her disappearance “strange.”
Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis told reporters at the press conference that prior to her disappearance, Russell had searched for whether or not you “have to pay for an Amber Alert,” what the maximum age for an Amber Alert is and for the movieTaken.
“All we knew was that we needed to find Carlee because she was missing and nowhere to be found,” Harris, of Homewood, Ala., tells PEOPLE. “Everybody deserves that. I did everything that I was supposed to, me and my team, and we did it the right way.”
In 2020, when Harris herself was tirelessly searching for her daughter who was missing for 32 days, she heard Aniah’s voice say to her, “Mom, please don’t let this happen to anybody else.”
She kept that promise to her 19-year-old daughter after she was tragically found dead after being abducted from a gas station in Auburn, Ala., and foundedAniah’s Heart, a non-profit organization that provides resources to assist families searching for a missing loved one, as well as sharing important education to help prevent future violent acts.
So when Harris, who gets calls weekly from families about missing people who need Angela and her team’s help, woke up on July 14 to many people on Facebook telling her about Russell’s shocking disappearance, she didn’t think twice to help.
Harris was put in touch with one of Russell’s closest friends on the phone who was “crying and so hysterical,” recalls Harris, and told her, “miss Angela, we need you.”
She heard that Russell’s car had been found on the side of the highway and that her phone had been left inside the car.
“That was a situation where we had to jump into action,” says Harris, “so I went to the Hoover Met [Complex], I called my team and they were on their way. The parents were already speaking to someone in the news, and then they said they got a tip and they were going to Georgia.”
Harris recalls Russell’s mother,Talitha, asking her for help.
“She said, ‘Will you please run this and take care of everything here?’ I said, ‘Absolutely’ and that’s how it started,” she says. “The parents were exactly the way I expected them to be. They were just like me. They were in continuous, constant go mode.”
The Hoover police told Harris they would be searching the scene first, so she got her team out into the community, passing out flyers, and making sure they knew to post on every social media platform. They set up a command center, people started bringing in food and drinks, they were getting maps together, and planning to do their search after the police were done.
All along, “I was still under the impression, or telling myself, that Carlee’s in danger,” says Harris. “We’ve got to get to her. She may just already be gone, and she’s not going to come home.”
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It wasn’t until the following day on Saturday that things started to take a turn for Harris.
After a full day searching with no luck, and some men on her team who expressed some suspicions, Harris got home from the command center that night and received a call from Russell’s friend who had first reached out to her when she went missing.
“All of a sudden somebody says that she’s [Russell] at the Red Roof Inn. [Her friend] was like, ‘Do you think it’s true?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know, but we need to find out.’
It wasn’t even five minutes later when Harris got a call back and was told, ‘Miss Angela, Miss Angela, somebody said she’s home,’” Harris says.
Harris called Talitha who was in a panic, she recalls, and confirmedRussell was in fact back home.
“I said, ‘Is she okay?’ and she said, ‘I don’t know. She seems to be okay. She just seems like she’s in shock. We’re going to take her to the hospital.'”
Harris remembers then breaking down.
“I can’t even tell you the emotion I felt knowing that she was home and safe,” she says. “It was overwhelming.”
The following day on Sunday, Harris went over the Russell’s residence and had dinner with the family, she says.
“I just went in and hugged Carlee and I told her that I’m so happy that she’s alive and I’m so happy she’s okay,” says Harris, who let Russell rest during the brief visit. “She hugged me back and she was like, ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done.’”
When Harris saw the press conference the following day, “I’ve really just been basically speechless to be honest,” she says. “I’m just trying to be classy and neutral because something is telling me in my spirit that that’s the way I need to be. Of course deep down inside I’m very angry. I do not regret anything at all.”
In general, says Harris, a situation like this could cause problems for people that will become missing.
“If I could control everything, there would never be another missing person. But unfortunately, that’s just not the way our world is right now. But I think it does desensitize people, and it just makes them not want to rush to get involved as quickly or at all,” she says.
Adds Harris: “I’m moving forward with Aniah’s Heart; continuing to educate people on safety and teach self defense classes. If someone else is missing and they need our help, we will be supportive and we will search if we have to. This is really what me, my family, and everyone at Aniah’s Heart is concentrating on right now. There’s still so much more work that has to be done. I don’t want people to hesitate. I want them to take every case seriously.”
source: people.com
