A Schuylkill County woman accused of taking two teenage girls from their Tennessee home and transporting them to Pennsylvania before being arrested in Cumberland County over the weekend is the teens’ grandmother, officials said.
State Police stopped Ana Rodriguez-Gonzalez, 60, of the first block of Center Street, Tamaqua, and Henry Rodriguez, 36, of Allentown, while they were heading north on Interstate 81 in South Middleton Township shortly before midnight on Sunday, State Police said.
An active arrest warrant had been issued for the suspects out of Hardin County, Tennessee where they’d been accused of taking the two sisters, aged 17 and 15, from their home in the city of Savannah on Saturday.
Both girls were found safely in the car with Rodriguez-Gonzalez and Rodriguez when troopers stopped them.
The incident had initiated lost child alerts and FBI intervention.
Rodriguez is uncle to the girls and is the son of Rodriguez-Gonzalez, according to Hardin County Sheriff Johnny Alexander.
The girls are now in state custody in Tennessee, he said.
The two arrestees are being extradited to Hardin County and will face charges of custodial interference, along with other possible charges, he said.
Court documents gave this account:
Based on information from the Hardin Township Sheriff’s Department, which was using cellphone pings to determine the GPS location of the suspects, Pennsylvania State Police knew that their grey Nissan Rogue SUV was heading north on I-81 in Cumberland County.
Troopers stopped the vehicle, which Rodriguez was driving with Rodriguez-Gonzalez the and girls as passengers.
The arrestees appeared Monday before District Judge John J. Hanner II in Carlisle and were taken to Cumberland County Prison as they awaited extradition to Tennessee.
Court papers said that Rodriguez-Gonzalez “knowingly took her two juvenile grandchildren across the Alabama state line and harbored them at a hotel without the mother’s consent” before she and Rodriguez continued on to Pennsylvania.
Soon after the girls went missing, the sheriff’s department indicated that their mother reported leaving her residence at around 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, and that both of her daughters were then home. The mother stated that since there was no power, she had gone to a friend’s house to take a shower, and when she returned there was a note from the girls stating that they were going to the creek to play their instruments, officials said.
The girls did not return, and The Harbert Hills Academy, which the girls attend, sent people to search in the location specified in the note, officials said.
As of Saturday night, there were still no signs of the girls, and neither had a phone, as far as their mother knew.
Photos of the girls were circulated online, and their mother reported that they had contacted their aunt from a blocked number and told her that they were all right.
In a Facebook post, the sheriff’s department thanked all who helped locate the girls, including the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the FBI field offices in Birmingham and Nashville, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, Pennsylvania State Police, the Hardin County Fire Department and “anyone else who shared the posts to get the word out or helped in the initial search efforts.”