Buffalo Police safely recover two missing children
Police say they have made several arrests as a result
Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A pair of children that were reported missing Thursday evening were safely found Friday afternoon by Buffalo police.
In an update posted by the Buffalo Police Department on X, formerly known as Twitter, officials have safely recovered 10-year-old Eiania Hale and her brother, 8-year-old Edward Hale after the call was made to police a little after 6:30 p.m. ET Thursday by their legal guardian.
Buffalo police also say several arrests have been made as a result of this incident.
Through a video canvas done by investigators, the two children appeared to have willingly gotten into a vehicle on Lawn Avenue about two-and-a-half hours earlier on Thursday at around 4 p.m. ET. There is also additional video of the same two children getting into, what appears to be, the same car on Benzinger Street at about 6:15 p.m. ET.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said earlier Friday the legal guardian has custody of the children, while their biological mother has an active order of protection against her to not have any contact with the kids.
"The biological mother lives on Benzinger, we have video of those children willingly getting into a car on Benzinger two hours and 15 minutes after they were seen getting into that original car," said Commissioner Gramaglia on Friday.
While investigators did not have a license plate number of the vehicle at the time of Friday's press conference, they said the car in question was a tan of gold-colored Chevy Impala somewhere in the 2009-to-2013 model years.
While Gramaglia couldn't assess the level of danger the children were in, he did express legitimate concern over the welfare of the kids before they were located.
There was no Amber Alert been issued for the missing children at the time, because the alerts need to be very specific before being sent out.
"You would need to have an exact license plate and other information. Amber Alerts are not meant to - this is not the right way to say this for this case - 'cry wolf'. You have to have very exact specific information before you can put an Amber Alert out," Gramaglia explained. "If we determined that we get to that stage and we have the information necessary to put out an Amber Alert, and we have to, again, fill all the boxes, the necessary information to do that, then we would do that at that point."
