CORNWALL, Ontario – A pair of Amish girls who were abducted Wednesday have been returned to their family alive and safe, according to U.S. media reports.
Fannie and Delila Miller were reunited with their parents Thursday evening, reported WWNY TV.
The station said the two girls were abducted by two men, who earlier this evening took them to a home and left them there, telling the girls not to leave.
Instead, the girls went looking for help, and within a short time a nearby homeowner recognized them as the missing girls and brought them home.
Law enforcement in St. Lawrence County, just south of Cornwall across the international border, were scouring the countryside searching for the girls.
An Amber alert had been issued.
The girls were abducted at around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at a roadside stand in the town of Oswegatchie, about an hour from Cornwall.
Police, including deputies, state troopers, forest rangers and U.S. Border Patrol agents, were part of the search in areas along the Canadian border.
The girls were waiting on a customer at the family’s roadside stand, officials said, when the abduction took place. A witness, reportedly, saw a passenger in a vehicle put something into the back seat, and when the vehicle drove off the children were gone.
The rural county is home to New York’s second-largest Amish population, which has grown by some 10,000 upstate over the past decade, drawn by productive land and property prices lower than in Pennsylvania.
Police are looking for the suspects.