Complicated Hunt for 2 Amish Sisters Ends With Their Safe Return (434 hits)
August 14, 2014-On Wednesday evening, they were gathered near the barn, milking the cows, when Delila, 7, saw a white, four-door sedan pull up to the family’s wooden vegetable stand. She and her 12-year-old sister, Fannie, walked a few hundred feet to the roadside to greet the customer.
Then they disappeared.
Their abduction set off a statewide Amber Alert and a sweeping search effort that used every high-tech method available to law enforcement. Helicopters were dispatched, divers put on scuba gear to scour the murky depths of nearby rivers and border agents combed through hours of video for a car matching the description of the one that pulled up to the vegetable stand. ...
The search ran into problems early on because there was no picture of Delila or Fannie; photography is forbidden in the Old Order Amish community. The police persuaded the family to work with an artist who spoke their language, Pennsylvania Dutch, and the family agreed to the release of a sketch of the older daughter. ...
On Thursday night, more than a day after they disappeared, the St. Lawrence County district attorney’s office said that the girls had been found. Their return ended a search that was complicated by the customs of the Amish as well as the technological problems that come with the modern world. The girls were dropped off at a house in Richville, about 20 miles from their family farm, said Mary E. Rain, the district attorney. Residents of the house in Richville drove the girls home and handed them over to a sheriff’s deputy, Ms. Rain said.
When the family discovered that the girls were missing, it had to go to the house of a neighbor — a person they referred to as “English,” meaning not Amish — and ask someone to call 911. The police said they got that call shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday. But even after the call for help went out, the authorities were delayed in distributing a wide-scale alert because the county government’s email system was down, Ms. Rain said.
The Amish in New York’s North Country are descendants of the Anabaptists and began settling in the area in 1974, according to the St. Lawrence Chamber of Commerce. They were drawn to the area by its isolation and plentiful farmland. There are estimated to be several thousand Amish living in the county, and they adhere to a strict set of rules governing everything from how they dress to how they travel. Amish farm stands, like the wooden shack in front of the Miller home, dot local roads, offering items like vegetables and fresh maple syrup.
State Senator Pattie Ritchie, who lives nearby and visited the Millers on Thursday, said there were no serious tensions between the Amish and other residents. They largely keep to themselves, separated by culture and language. In fact, law enforcement officials said the language barrier helped explain why 24 hours after the disappearance, some facts remained unclear. For instance, the authorities were unsure whether there were 11 or 13 children in the family. On Thursday, the extended clan gathered at the house. Senator Ritchie said she took 40 pizzas to the home. “I am just shocked,” she said. “The entire community is shocked.” The girl’s father, she said, was stoic. “They are very religious,” she said. “It was pretty tough talking about the situation.” She said the father said simply, “This is in God’s hands.”
