Following her declared kidnapping by her unsupervised mother in Illinois, Kayla Unbehaun was the subject of a 6-year investigation by family members with the assistance of the public.
She was located safely more than 600 miles away in North Carolina, where she is currently 15 years old, and was recently reconnected with her father in Illinois, according to Samantha Booth of the Asheville Police Department.
Kayla was nine years old when her non-custodial mother, Heather Unbehaun, kidnapped her from the Illinois town of South Elgin, which is near Chicago, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
According to Ryan Iserka, Kayla’s father, Unbehaun was granted restricted visitation but was given full custody of Kayla at the beginning of 2017. The pair didn’t come back from their camping excursion, Iserka discovered when he came to bring up his daughter on July 5, WBBM stated the next year.
As per the non-profit agency that assists families in finding American children who are abducted by relatives, outsiders, or run away, Unbehaun was given an illegal kidnapping notice on July 28, 2017. The FBI received close to 360,000 complaints of missing kids in 2022, it reported, stressing that repetitions are possible.