Kidnapping: Woman questioned, parrot taken
Police on Friday morning searched and removed potential evidence, including a talking parrot, from a Cobbs Creek home in connection with the case of a 5-year-old girl abducted from her West Philadelphia school last month.
Detectives also questioned a 19-year-old woman who was in the house.
Police sources said the evidence leading to the house evolved like this: Investigators had brought the girl to the neighborhood near the school numerous times after the Jan. 14 abduction. Each time, police walked her around, hoping she would recognize the house where she was taken.
On Monday, they brought her back to walk the neighborhood with her mother, so the child might feel more comfortable.
That's when, walking down an alley, the girl said she recognized the rear of a house on the 6200 block of Walton Avenue.
The girl told investigators that her captors had covered her eyes when she was taken into the house, but that she left out of the rear of the house with her eyes uncovered.
In her initial statement to police, the child told police there had been a talking bird in the room where she was held captive.
While conducting surveillance on the house between Monday and Thursday, a neighbor told investigators there was a large bird in the house.
When police officers entered the house early hours Friday, they encountered a parrot that repeating "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"
Police questioned the 19-year-old woman in the house, who may have been involved in the after-school program at Bryant School at 6001 Cedar Ave., where the girl was in her kindergarten class the day she was taken.
Crime-scene investigators took photographs of the residence, which will be shown to the child, who had provided a description of the interior of the house.
No one has been charged in the case, police Capt. John Darby said, but he confirmed that police were speaking with someone from the house. He also confirmed that police were running forensic tests on some items taken from the home.
"We're aggressively following this," he said. "We're doing stuff out there every hour."
The girl was kidnapped Jan. 14 by a woman dressed in Muslim garb who posed as her mother and signed her out of school. She was found early the next morning, alone, in an Upper Darby playground.
The house searched is just off Cobbs Creek Parkway and is close to a path that leads to that playground.
The child told police the woman who took her from school walked her a few blocks to a house, where she was blindfolded and hidden under a bed. There were other people in the home, police said, including a man, and at one point the girl also came into contact with a teenage girl.
Police believe the girl was targeted but have not publicly commented on a possible motive.
The crime outraged the West Philadelphia community, and the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the abduction is now $105,000. Police have received more than 200 tips.
Anyone with information about the case can call police at 215-685-3251 or 215-686-8477 (TIPS), send a text message to 773847 (PPDTIP), or e-mail tips@phillypolice.com.